#2
The Guardian (UK)
June 8, 2015
Is the 'Moscow experiment' over?
The plan was to create a new type of city that answered the needs of Moscow's creative middle classes. But did the exit of Sergei Kapkov, the culture minister who ushered in these changes, also signal the end of the city's urban revival?
Shaun Walker in Moscow
[Video and photos here http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/08/is-the-moscow-experiment-over-gorky-park-sergei-kapkov-alexei-navalny]

Five years ago, to take a walk along the embankment of the Moscow river, south-west of the Kremlin, would have been a miserable affair - through the depressing, weed-strewn expanse of Gorky Park, navigating pot-holed roads and dodging stray dogs.

Now, it is a very different experience. The waterfront has been redeveloped and the park totally remodelled - it is now packed with families strolling in the summer sunshine or skating on its frozen paths, depending on the time of year. Along the way, all manner of eateries and coffee shops cater to newly acquired tastes; people on bikes speed past in the cycle lanes.

Unlike the jarring, ruthless, civilisational changes of the 1990s, the changes to Moscow over the past five years were almost imperceptible on a month-to-month basis. But taken cumulatively, they have resulted in the emergence of a very different city; one that is eminently more liveable.

"What we have seen in the past few years is a change of tone, of the substance of the city," said Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper, who founded the Moscow lifestyle magazine Afisha in 1999 and then the Strelka institute in central Moscow, which was set up in 2010 to be the vanguard of urban thinking in the Russian capital. "Suddenly Moscow is a city where taking a nice walk on a Sunday afternoon is a normal thing to do and something pleasurable."

These changes were most associated with city official Sergei Kapkov. A member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and a long-term associate of oligarch Roman Abramovich, he became the unlikely champion of a new type of city that would answer the needs of the middle class that had sprung up in recent years. He oversaw the redevelopment of Gorky Park and then ran the city's Culture Department, until he resigned earlier this year.

Kapkov's departure, apparently from frustration at having his initiatives blocked, comes in parallel with a changed political climate in the country, as western sanctions and falling oiling prices combined to strike a serious blow to the economy last December, and Russian counter-sanctions banned imports of cheeses, fruits and other products from the west.

Fewer Muscovites could afford to travel abroad, and fewer tourists arrived from the west, evidenced by a number of airlines cutting flights to the city in recent months. Many here are now wondering whether Kapkov's "Moscow experiment" is over, and how durable the changes he introduced will be.

"Kapkov's reforms provided a whole generation of young creative types with a sense - perhaps somewhat illusory - that they could do things on a small scale; that there was a real fabric of life in a public city," said Tsentsiper.

Under Yury Luzhkov, who was mayor of the city from 1992 to 2010, there was little time to think of quality of life or urban development, as Muscovites focused on getting rich, or simply surviving. Luzhkov's legendary bad taste manifested itself in the overbearing statues by his buddy Zurab Tsereteli. During his tenure cheap, gaudy architecture was often built on sites previously occupied by historic buildings that had succumbed to fire with suspiciously convenient timing, thus avoiding hefty renovation costs.

Luzhkov was fired in 2010 and replaced with Sergei Sobyanin, a transition that coincided with some in Moscow beginning to think seriously about how to make the city not just richer, but more liveable. In summer 2010, Tsentsiper's Strelka institute opened with the aim of developing architecture and urban planning in the city. There was a lot of catching up to do.

"During the Soviet period, all the finances for the city came from the state; there were no other ways of financing urban development," said Evgeny Asse, a leading Moscow architect who worked in the city planning bureau in the 1980s and who took part in many projects during the Kapkov years, including work on parts of the Moscow river embankment. "Now you have the dilemma of how to combine three factors: the state, developers and society. All over the world there's an issue of finding a compromise between these three players, but [elsewhere] they have decades of experience."

Asse said the situation improved under Kapkov, but there is still a top-down management system in Moscow city politics - based on the old Soviet idea that the city offers "gifts" to its residents, rather than engaging in a symbiotic process with the population to find the ideal urban solutions.

"Take pedestrianisation: they said they would make 19 kilometres of streets pedestrian and that's what happened," Asse said. "But I never saw any research explaining why 19 kilometres, why the particular streets they chose, how to make these pedestrian streets the basis of life for real people. The rents get even more expensive when the streets are pedestrianised, meaning you end up with expensive boutiques that are of no use to ordinary people. The small cafes and retailers that should be the fabric of urban life can't afford to be there."

Sometimes it feels like expert consultation is there "merely to provide legitimisation for bad decisions", according to Asse. He cited the example of a new hotel planned for Leningradsky Prospekt, one of the main city thoroughfares, for which one design plan envisages a mock-up of one of Stalin's "Seven Sisters", the neo-gothic skyscrapers that dot Moscow.

"A group of us said there is nothing wrong with that style, but it would be good to find a different architectural language, to avoid talking in stereotypes. But they told us the mayor had already made his decision. So then what was the point of having us in the role of experts?"

As well as the top-down transformations, there have been more organic changes to the city as huge numbers of Muscovites began travelling regularly and bringing back ideas from their trips. Levels of customer service are still probably the worst of any European capital, but truly egregious rudeness and aggression are now the exception rather than the norm, as a whole generation of Muscovites who have travelled the world no longer find surly, Soviet-style service acceptable at home.

The brash, flash-the-cash hedonism of the early post-Soviet years has given way to a new, more mature eating-and-drinking scene. A plethora of cafes, bars and restaurants have been opened by people who are enthusiastic about food and drink, rather than just keen to make a quick profit. Tours to Brooklyn in New York were organised for Moscow restaurant owners to give them menu and design ideas, and some chefs have begun experimenting with updated versions of traditional Russian ingredients and recipes. Indeed, the gradual discovery of a collective Moscow foodie gene resembles the gastronomic changes in Britain of two decades ago.

Many link the increased "official" interest in urban thinking with an attempt to channel the energy of this new middle class: the Muscovites who have done well from the oil-boom years, travel frequently, and wanted to introduce some change at home. After the protest movement that swept the capital in 2011-12, extra thought was paid to the idea of what to do with the movement and its most charismatic leader, Alexei Navalny, a Muscovite who said he wanted to stand for mayor.

The Russian authorities have see-sawed over Navalny, with some elements keen to lock him up, and others believing he should be allowed to operate, then defeated politically. While he has faced frequent court cases and his brother has been jailed, he was also allowed to stand in mayoral elections in 2013 - the idea being that, with all the attention now lavished on the new urban middle class, they would not require opposition politics. Despite Sobyanin's use of the "administrative resource" and skewed media coverage, however, Navalny got an impressive 27% of the vote - not enough to force a second round, but enough to vindicate those in the Kremlin who felt he should never have been allowed to stand in the first place.

"The scheme of bringing hipsters to Sobyanin by giving them all this nice stuff didn't work," said Asse. "It became more and more clear that Kapkov's policies were somehow in contradiction to the general trend in the country. He was never in opposition, but his heroes were not the heroes of the Kremlin."

"Of course you can't deny the improvements, they are there," said Navalny himself, when asked about the city's recent changes. "But basically, what has happened is there was a huge gap in quality of life between Moscow and most normal western cities, and we've closed that gap slightly. I don't think there's any correlation between bicycle lanes and political activity. If you think falsifying elections is bad, no amount of bicycles are going to help you."

Navalny lives in a small apartment in the outlying region of Marino, a grey suburb where he says little has changed in the past few years. Given the amount of money Moscow authorities have at their disposal, he added, what is amazing is that much more has not been done.

"When I stood for mayor in 2013, we did the sums and only Shanghai and New York had bigger municipal budgets. It was the third biggest municipal budget in the world; if things were done more efficiently, you should be able to improve more than a couple of parks with this money."

Kapkov's idea that the energy of creative, possibly opposition-minded Muscovites should be channelled into improving the fabric of the city had failed. He declined to be interviewed for this article, but in a Facebook post announcing his resignation, he wrote: "For those who come after me, I would ask you to remember that our bosses are the city's residents, not its rulers. Muscovites are self-sufficient, they don't need choices made for them and they don't need to be taught. We need to respect them and their choices. The city is made up of people: diverse, difficult, different people. Listen to them, and you'll be amazed how easy it is to make the right decisions."

The big question, and the one to which nobody knows the answer, is what comes next for Moscow. The war in Ukraine, a more aggressive nationalism, and the atmosphere that led to the murder of Boris Nemtsov, have all pointed to the city becoming more introverted and withdrawn.

"When I see my young friends opening another food market or something similar, they seem to be strangely out of touch with this new zeitgeist," said Tsentsiper. His consultancy company is now working on the revamping of VDNKh, a huge Soviet-era exhibition centre. It is also developing a startup which aims to provide an affordable, off-the-shelf renovation service for the 83% of Muscovites who live in standardised Soviet-era housing.

For all that Kapkov lost his battles, however, there remains a certain legacy, both for Moscow and Russia as a whole. Regional administrations across the country have suddenly become interested in the renovation of parks and the rejuvenation of public space. In Moscow, many of the positive changes to the fabric of the city are hard to undo, whatever happens. Many people worry there are changes in the air, but hope is far from lost - with some suggesting that if the Europeanisation of Moscow is over, the end of this copycat urban development may not be such a bad thing anyway.

"The history of Russian culture has always been a pendulum swinging between love with the west and a more introverted search for its true self," Tsentsiper said. "In the last 10 years, there has been a lot of looking to the west and copying from it. There has been a lack of a narrative about who we are, what we are, and why we are here. Perhaps it won't be the worst thing in the world if the pendulum now swings back to an interest in Russia and Russianness."

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 #3
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
June 8, 2015
Skolkovo initiative could give new boost to Russian startups
On June 2-3, 2015 a major event was held at the Startup Village at Skolkovo Innovation Center in Moscow. The initiative has the potential to stimulate the development of Russia's startup environment.
Victoria Zavyalova, RBTH

Russia's startup entrepreneurs look set to benefit from the backing of Moscow's Skolkovo Innovation Center, following a large-scale event recently held by the organization at its Startup Village.

Over the course of two days the Startup Village greeted more than 10,000 participants: Russian and foreign entrepreneurs, investors, venture fund representatives and government officials. The event was an unprecedented one in Russia, where the innovation ecosystem began developing only a few years ago. The Startup Village was the grand finale of a road show of Russian development institutions. Throughout the year, as part of the Startup Tour, they have been looking for the best innovation ideas in 12 Russian cities.

"The startup environment has just begun in Russia - we are witnessing its birth," says Alexei Sitnikov, vice president of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), a joint project between the Skolkovo Foundation and MIT. In 2015, during the course of the Startup Village event, Skoltech held its first graduation. More than 70 percent of its students established their own companies during their period of studies.
 
"What makes a startup land in Russia?"

Experts at the Startup Village recommended that companies think "globally," and not orient themselves exclusively towards import substitution. Skolkovo Foundation's Vice President Vasily Belov stated that 89 Skolkovo resident-companies currently sell their products abroad.

"Just a few years ago Russia did not have a startup environment or infrastructure for their development," claimed Sitnikov. "Often the technologies that Russian companies offer are the best of their kind. The only question is whether or not they can be commercialized abroad."

Today Russian startup companies have an enormous selection of platforms for their development. At the Startup Village techno park representatives from Spain, Turkey, Singapore, Japan, the U.S. and many other countries spoke about their opportunities. Before entering foreign markets "it is important to get a strong foundation in your own country," said Susanne Burkeholder, director of the Huston Technology Center, one of Skolkovo's partners.

"What makes a startup land in Russia?" Burkeholder remarks. "It is the support system, which Skolkovo definitely has. The innovation center's collaborators have a very high level of competency. Something unique is developing here. Therefore Russia is an excellent place to establish a company."
 
In search of investors and partners

Over 1,000 investors from all over the world registered at the Startup Village conference. On the first day alone 14 agreements were signed with a total value of 13 billion rubles. This amount tallies only the largest agreements, including those with giants such as Alibaba Express and Panasonic. Smaller deals took place on the sidelines, sometimes even during the startups' pitch sessions.

"Do you understand that to test your antitumor apparatus and then try to enter a market, you will need to invest much, much more?" a jury member asked a representative of a regional startup that presented their idea at the Biomed competition. There were some questions from the audience. Then an intellectual property consultant from a large Korean company stood up and asked: "How much do you need for your development?" The representative said $10,000. It was in such an informal atmosphere that potential deals were hashed out.

Approximately 350 teams participated in a competition to attract investments for their projects. A total of 26 startups made it to the final round and there were three winners. The Graviton project won first place, which offers sensors for security systems. The Tektum project came in second place, a product offering a hemostatic device. The bronze medal was given to RealTarget, a new immunotherapy method for treating oncological disease.
 
Is technology outside the realm of politics?

The main obstacle for Russian startups today is the economic sanctions and the political environment. According to a Finnish participant, many Finnish companies that were interested in Russian startups and wanted to enter the Russian market had to postpone their expansion. The 40 foreign diplomats visiting Startup Village all seemed to agree that, technology should stay "outside of politics."

American Ambassador John Tefft reminded everyone that half a dozen of large American companies, including Microsoft, IBM and Boeing, are among the innovation center's partners. French Ambassador to Russia Jean-Maurice Ripert, who was clearly disappointed by the absence of French cheese at the food court, talked about the participation of French architects in the creation of Skolkovo's architectural image.

"We like to do business with people here," said Burkeholder. "I think that bilateral relations are happening here. They happen between companies, they happen between people. There are some things to overcome, but I think we'll just keep moving forward."

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 #4
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
June 5, 2015
Russia's middle class unrepresented in politics, says report
Experts have studied the political tastes of Russia's nascent middle class and come to the conclusion that this social group are not attracted to the agendas of any of the country's existing political groups, with no party willing to seriously tackle corruption and cronyism or implement meaningful economic reforms. However, in the current circumstances, there is little chance that an alternative force will emerge in Russia any time soon.
Yekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH

No party in the country is good for the middle class: This is the conclusion that experts of the Institute of Priority Regional Projects have reached in a report titled "The Urban Middle Class: An Agenda, but No Party."

When speaking about the middle class, the authors make a reservation; in the global sense of the term, it is yet to emerge in Russia, but "middle social strata" do exist.

"It is, above all, socially active people who tend to change the conditions of life, to influence processes, rather than adapt to them," the institute's CEO Nikolai Mironov told RBTH. By Mironov's estimate, such people constitute about 30 percent of the population.

Alternatively, people with a corresponding level of income are assigned to the "middle class." Using this criterion did in fact produce a figure of 30 percent, Levada Center expert Denis Volkov confirmed in an interview with RBTH. However, this number today includes civil servants and state employees, who in recent years "have started to make a good living."

"But the independent behavior usually expected from the middle class cannot be attributed to them, since they relate to the state," Volkov explained. There are no more than 10 percent of truly active people among them (for instance, businessmen), but they are also guided, first of all, by the opinion of the state, he said.
 
One party and a set of dummies

According to the study, a fairly high level of confidence in the federal government and the figure of the president is indeed inherent in the middle class, rather than a "leftist component."

"In general, the attitude to mass protests [in this environment] has worsened, compared to the 2012-2013 surveys," the report notes. On the contrary, there is a fear of protests due to Ukraine and its "orange revolutions."

What is becoming principal is not an ideology, but the ability of a party to take action. The problem agenda of the middle class includes the crisis ("the government does not want to take responsibility for structural economic reforms, does not want to carry them out," reads the report), corruption, the business climate, the clan structure of Russia's ruling elite and the failure of all players to comply with the rules of the game.

Because of these problems, demands for the modernization of the political system (it had stayed in public attention for two years before that) have fallen by the wayside, "replaced by a mood of total apathy." The respondents describe everything that happens as "window dressing": "The party system stands for nothing, for no-one's interests"; "We have one party [United Russia - RBTH] and dummies around it. And that's the whole party system."

"People have simply realized that in fact these institutions are not able to implement an alternative," said Nikolai Mironov, referring as an example to the Civic Platform party formed by billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov.

"They were looking at it, but over time it became clear that it was not going to engage in any active political life."
 
Man with a background

But despite the apathy, Russia's nascent middle class has a demand: The new force should have a man "capable of rapidly launching political activity" behind it.

There is no time for anybody from an ordinary environment to fulfill himself as a politician ("the elevator is not working"), it has to be someone "with a background," said Mironov. An important condition is an effective feedback system, so that the party could advance the interests of the electorate, rather than their own.

In this context, none of the existing parties effectively suits the middle class; ruling party United Russia does not hear it, while the others are unable to turn the tide. Neither the liberal Yabloko party or any "non-systemic" opposition was mentioned by any of the respondents at all.

"There is oversupply on the part of the liberal forces, but there is a serious problem there, not only with outside communication, but also from the inside: So far they are unable to agree even among themselves," said Alexander Pozhalov, director of research at the Institute of Socioeconomic and Political Studies loyal to the Kremlin.
 
An unsuitable time

But Pozhalov disagrees that Russian politics has nothing to offer the middle class today.

"United Russia is in progress. After the not too successful federal and regional elections of 2011 for the party, many mistakes have been fixed," he said. According to him, United Russia today is "more open and flexible to requests from outside," and communication is being "fine-tuned."

According to Pozhalov, it is the public movements that have now become closely engaged with solving problems. "I would single out the All-Russia People's Front. Over the last year, it organized work in many regions, it has access to the authorities of different levels, and its demands are not political; these are demands to eliminate specific problems," he said.

The Levada Center pollster, meanwhile, warns that the political system is not ready to encompass a new party with equal rights and to ensure fair rules of the game at all. Besides, interest in parties and ideologies is on the wane. "In elections, people will vote for biographies, not parties," said Denis Volkov.

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 #5
Vedomosti
June 4, 2015
Paper sums up foreign deputy prime minister's suggestions on economy
Olga Kuvshinova and Filipp Sterkin: "Kudrin's Programme. For Russia to Return to High Growth Rates It is Necessary to Increase Competition in the Economy and in Politics, Aleksey Kudrin Said, Setting out His Proposals to Senators."

Aleksey Kudrin, head of the Civil Initiatives Committee and former vice premier and finance minister, has set out a plan of reforms necessary for economic growth in front of the Federation Council. In 2012-2018 growth will average 1.4 per cent a year - approximately half of the world's average. Russia's share of the world economy is falling and, along with it, so are its investment attractiveness and technological potential, Kudrin stated.

The government acknowledges the problem, Kudrin noted: it's "Main Areas of Activity" (ONDP) point out that without reforms long-term growth will not exceed 2-3 per cent. But so far there is no strategic action plan, he complained, the ONDP is only a declaration.

A pity they did not listen

The reasons for the economic slowdown include the reduction in oil prices and the sanctions (see insert) but they only added to the domestic systemic problems - the economy slowed down back in 2013, Kudrin pointed out. He named the failure to implement structural reforms as the main reason. The time has now come to pay for this.

[Insert] Full-blown crisis

The sanctions because of the conflict with Ukraine are taking 1-1.5 per cent growth away from Russia, Kudrin assessed. The economy is now in full-blown crisis "by all the measures that exist", Kudrin said: "We are in recession and, I believe, the slump will be deeper (2.8 per cent, according to the Ministry for Economic Development forecast) - around 4 per cent." [Insert ends]

For example, the price of not increasing the pension age is the need to increase the Russian Pension Fund transfer by R1.4 trillion by 2018. Budget expenditure must not increase which means that resources will be taken from other areas. Time has been wasted: even if the pension age starts to be raised now, taking the speed of this increase into account - by three or six months a year - it will take several years to improve the balance of the pension system. But in a situation when the working-age population is declining by 900,000 a year and the number of pensioners is rising by 700,000-800,000, there is no other solution.

Another rejected proposal of Kudrin's which was the cause of his conflict with Premier Dmitriy Medvedev and cost him his post is the increase in defence expenditure. Since 2010 it has risen by a factor of 2.4 or R2 trillion a year and even in 2015 it has risen by R629 billion, despite the budget sequestration, which is comparable with the funding of all higher education. "Of this reduction (of budget expenditure) which has hurt the country today, a large part is connected not with the reduction of budget revenue - it has not fallen yet - but with the fact that we are ensuring an increase in defence expenditure and taking this money from other sectors," Kudrin explained. He proposed implementing the arms programme not in 10 years but in 15 years: this would make it possible to avoid the distortion of the budget, he said, recalling his position. In addition, he "was perfectly aware" that industry is not ready for a multiple increase in output, Kudrin said: "Nevertheless, money was allocated and a rush job was created." As a result, part of the planned expenditure is being moved back to later years anyway and the volume of output paid for but not delivered on time is rising at the same time, he points out in his report: "When people say: it is necessary to feed your own army so as not to feed other people's armies, it would be good to know how to do this."

The most complex thing

The old model of an economy oriented towards demand and allowing itself to grow without a change in output quality does not work anymore, Kudrin explained. What is needed is a new economy oriented towards the creation of more competitive output with high productivity, investments in technology, and greater cooperation between the production and non-production sectors, he enumerated. It is useless to try to improve just one element of this chain: it all has to become an order of magnitude more efficient. And for this the system of management, including state management, must become more efficient, he concluded.

However, the state control of the economy, conversely, reduces this efficiency. The state cannot compete with itself and if there is no competition there are no incentives for technological development either, Kudrin stated. Nor are state enterprises interested in commercial success - the state will help if need be. "We cannot emancipate the potential of private competition at all or go more boldly into the market - this requires new institutions, knowledge, and the corresponding state regulation," Kudrin urged. It is no longer possible to boost the economy by the appointment of people responsible for the solution of this or that question, Kudrin is sure: "Every economic link must work."

But weak institutions hinder this: there is the lack of protection for property, the imperfection of the judicial system, corruption, and high pressure on business, he listed. This year the pressure on business has only increased because of the crisis and the law enforcement organs' powers have been expanded, he recalled.

Kudrin lists parliaments, political parties, and voters as the most important regulator and controller. It is specifically via the system of legislative power that laws are adopted. Without a high quality political system the entire chain of effective decisions does not work, Kudrin sums up: "The chief cannot distribute everything and always be motivated." Reforms must affect the regions too: it is necessary to remove excess filters for candidate governors and intensify their accountability to voters. "Growth will come from the regions," Kudrin is sure. Institutional reforms are the most complex part, he acknowledged. But without them it will be even more complex in the future and he urged senators to support the implementation of reforms.

"Today you are not burdened by state powers and you are able to act as a free artist and express your viewpoint without restrictions. It was very interesting for us, there are things to think about," Valentina Matviyenko, head of the Federation Council, said thanking Kudrin and she presented him with a medal in honour of the Federation Council's jubilee.

Kudrin himself does not rule out a return to power for himself but only if this power is minded towards reforms, as in the early 2000s, he said in an Interfax interview. There is no such likelihood in the current political system, he believes: "This is why I am not there."

The Federation Council is not an entirely customary platform for someone who is not in power and who criticizes the authorities, political analyst Aleksey Makarkin says. The speech was programmatic but right now the authorities do not need the political reforms that Kudrin is insisting on, it will only require the exhaustion of the reserves beyond 2015-2016. But now this is rather a set of signals, Makarkin believes. This is a signal to the Medvedev government which, thanks to the Kremlin's support, has not encountered criticism in the State Duma but is now receiving it from the Federation Council platform. This is a signal to the modernist elites that have now become despondent that it is even possible to criticize the authorities from the authorities' rostrum and they listen to different opinions, Makarkin believes.

 #6
Moscow Times
June 9, 2015
Beleaguered Russian Science Foundation Dynasty Delays Decision on Closure
By Ivan Nechepurenko

Beleaguered science organization the Dynasty Foundation, which has been grappling in recent days with whether or not to shut its doors, announced that a decision on the matter will be delayed to provide time to wrap up ongoing projects, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday.

Following its inclusion on Russia's list of foreign agents, speculation swirled that the organization, which hands out grants for scientific research in Russia, would close. Dmitry Zimin, Dynasty's founder and the man whose fortune funds the foundation, has said in the past he would shut it down before accepting the label of "foreign agent."

The organization is presently focused on finishing up several ongoing projects, Yevgeny Yasin, a member of Dynasty's board of directors, said in comments to Kommersant. A decision is expected to be made on the organization's future in two to four weeks.

"We have discussed the option of a full closure of the foundation, but we have not made a final decision," Yasin said, Kommersant reported.

Dynasty was placed on the foreign agents list in late May. Under Russian law, the Justice Department can place any NGO that receives foreign funding and that engages in loosely defined "political activities" on the list. The 2012 law was controversial among critics, as the term "foreign agent" carries a strong Cold War association with espionage.

In the case of Dynasty, the "foreign funding" comes from Russian national Zimin's foreign-based bank accounts. With regard to political activity, in addition to its many scientific projects, Dynasty also funds Liberal Mission - an NGO that provides a platform for debate among liberal-minded economists, political scientists and sociologists.

The decision to classify Dynasty as a foreign agent was met with widespread criticism from the science community.

Some 1,500 protesters rallied in Moscow over the weekend in defense of the Dynasty Foundation, The Associated Press reported.

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#7
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
June 8, 2015
Escalation in Donbas, the ruble's new decline and Poroshenko
Media Roundup: Last week, the Russian media focused on the renewed escalation of tensions in the Donbas, the ruble's decline, and the first anniversary of Petro Poroshenko's presidency.
By Anastasia Borik

After what had been a lull in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, new reports of military clashes in Donbas have refocused media attention on Russia's role within the Ukraine conflict. As a result, Russian journalists took a closer look at the results from the year that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been in office, as well as the impact of the Ukrainian conflict on the ruble in foreign exchange markets.

The worsening situation in the east of Ukraine

The resumption of fighting in the east of Ukraine, in particular, near Marinka, aroused great interest among Russian journalists.

The opposition Novaya Gazeta writes about the official response of the Russian authorities to this new escalation. In particular, it quoted presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, pointing to provocations on the part of Kiev on the eve of the June EU Summit. The publication also noted that, according to the OSCE, both sides are accused of committing violations.

The independent Slon considers the recent developments in Marinka as a confirmation that the Minsk Agreements are not being fulfilled. The newspaper also predicts a deterioration of the situation, the intensification of fighting, and possible offensive operations by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) into the territory controlled by the Ukrainian Army.

The tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets reported on the American response to the escalation of the conflict, given that U.S. officials have accused Russia of the escalation, something the publication considers as a very unjust stance.

The pro-government Channel 1 accused the Kiev authorities of making provocations, and wrote about the victims of the attacks on civilian areas in Donetsk and nearby villages.

The first year of the presidency of Petro Poroshenko

Last week, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko held a conference dedicated to the anniversary of his first year in office. The results of the "Year of Poroshenko" were actively being discussed in the Russian media.

The pro-government Channel One TV network focused on the difficult economic situation in the country, the ravages of warfare, and the relations between Ukraine and the EU, which are becoming more complicated. Channel One considers that Poroshenko has not fulfilled many of the promises he made to the EU. The appointment of Mikheil Saakashvili, who is on the wanted list in Georgia, as the Governor of Odessa Oblast, also raises many doubts, said the TV channel.
The business publication Kommersant analyzed the performance of Poroshenko, noting that he keeps making a strong emphasis on the "expansion of Moscow," as well as to revanchist attitudes, promising to return Donbas and Crimea to Ukraine.

"Poroshenko did not skimp on making attacks on Moscow," writes Kommersant. "In particular, he urged 'preventing pro-Moscow political forces from achieving their revenge, not allowing them to form a fifth column' ... Also in his address to the Verkhovna Rada, the president warned about the threat of 'large-scale aggression' in the east of Ukraine."

FIFA: Blatter's resignation

Last week, the focus of the Russian mass media was the FIFA corruption scandal and the subsequent re-election of FIFA President Sepp Blatter. However, the re-election was not the end of this scandal - literally the next day, Blatter announced his voluntary resignation, pointing out that "not everyone agrees with my candidacy."

Meanwhile, analysts believe that the main reason for his departure was new evidence of Blatter's guilt in the corruption schemes of FIFA.

Moskovsky Komsomolets talked about rumors claiming that the resignation of Blatter would lead to Russia being denied the hosting of the World Cup in 2018. The publication cites the opinion of Russian politicians, who believe that such a scenario is highly unlikely, even with the anti-Russian sentiment in Europe and the United States.

The business publication Vedomosti wrote about corruption in FIFA, which has already led to charges being laid. It calls into question the World Cup in 2018 in Russia and the World Cup in 2022 in Qatar. Both countries, the publication informed, shall make every effort to preserve the championships, and have officially denied these events are threatened.

The independent Slon does not deny the political aspect in the whole FIFA story; however, it notes that there is a far more unpleasant scenario than the loss of the World Cup in 2018 that can occur - namely, the exclusion of the country from another important status structure. Russia, the author points out, thus would be excluded not just from the political club - the G8, but also the sports club.

New decline of the ruble

One of the main topics of the week was the rapid depreciation of the ruble against the dollar and the euro. Some analysts even started to recall the "Black Tuesday" in December 2014, when the foreign currency exchange rates in Russia beat all conceivable records. This week, the euro rose in value from 57 rubles for one euro to 63 rubles, and the dollar - from 52 to 56 rubles.

The business newspaper Vedomosti blamed the decline of the ruble not only on objective international trends, but also on the ill-conceived policy of the Central Bank of Russia. The newspaper's analysts noted that the financial regulator in fact sent the ruble in the downward direction, and no mechanism was used to limit the drop.

"The weakening of the ruble does not encourage people to keep their savings in rubles, and the inflow of foreign investments is not possible due to the confrontational foreign policy of Russia," the newspaper noted.

The pro-government Rossiyskaya Gazeta justified the actions of the Central Bank and quoted the statement made by the head of the regulatory body, Elvira Nabiullina, that the objective of the Central Bank's policy is to achieve an equitable exchange rate, and this is what all the efforts are directed at.
The business publication Kommersant points out that, over the past week, most developing countries have experienced a deterioration in the foreign exchange markets. However, Russia has been hit the hardest because it suffers most from the impact of external factors - renewed fighting in the east of Ukraine, as well as the failure of OPEC to make production cuts.

The Dynasty Foundation and prospects for Russian science

Last week the Dynasty Foundation, a Russian fund that popularizes science, was recognized as a 'foreign agent'. Many experts in the field of education have considered this as a quite innovative project, which could give Russian science a chance for a new future. In support of Dynasty and education in general, protest meetings were held in a number of Russian cities.

The opposition Novaya Gazeta wrote about the closing of this Foundation as a real shock to Russian education and science, as well as the fact that this move will reduce prospects for private investment into science.

The website of the Echo of Moscow radio station wrote about the personality of the head of the Foundation, Dmitry Zimin - a well-known researcher and philanthropist, who has spent many years assisting young scientists. The portal highlighted his positive role in numerous research projects and considers his departure from Russia as a real tragedy.

The business newspaper Vedomosti also stressed that the closure of Dynasty is one of the most tragic moments in the entire recent history of Russian science. The publication noted the most significant achievements of this Foundation, its major projects, and the role Zimin played in them.

Quotes of the Week:

Mikhail Serdyuk, member of the State Duma, on the possibility of losing the FIFA World Cup in 2018: "Russia represents a huge capacity and potential in the football market. In all spheres. There are no objective reasons for depriving Russia of the status of host country for the 2018 World Cup, and one can poke around in our application and accompanying documents until the World Cup 2018, and he or she will find nothing wrong."

Elvira Nabiullina, the head of Russia's Central Bank, on the depreciation of the ruble: "We have a floating exchange rate, it is affected by many factors simultaneously, and they reflect the current dynamics in the currency exchange markets. Of course, the exchange rate is also affected by the price of oil and the situation in the geopolitical sphere."

Opposition leader Alexey Navalny on the future of science in Russia, in connection with the departure of the Russian philanthropist and head of the Dynasty Foundation Dmitry Zimin: "The authority of science and education has dropped through the floor. It is not enough that no money is being provided - everything goes to the military and police budgets - now they are even imposing all sorts of "common history textbooks" ... the best scientists, internationally recognized, are leaving the country, and now they are howling at their backs: Off with you, you fifth column."

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 #8
Christian Science Monitor
June 9, 2015
NATO and Russia aren't talking to each other. Cold war lessons forgotten?
Several times during the cold war, miscommunication almost led to nuclear conflict. Now, amid tensions over Ukraine, Russia and the West are showing a new failure to communicate.
By Anna Mulrine and Staff writer Fred Weir, Correspondent

WASHINGTON; AND MOSCOW - Knowing your enemy doesn't just win the war. Sometimes, it also can be critical to keeping the peace.

Such was the case in 1983, during a massive NATO drill to test the alliance's capabilities to respond to a Soviet invasion of western Europe. Unknown to its planners, however, "Able Archer," which envisaged using nuclear weapons to halt the enemy advance, looked to Soviet eyes exactly the way Soviet intelligence had predicted a US nuclear "first strike" would unfold.

Though many of the details of how war was averted remain undisclosed, experts on both sides say the world came to the very brink of nuclear Armageddon through a chain of preventable misunderstandings. It was one of several cold war close calls that convinced Moscow and Washington to step up military contacts and establish formal, as well as informal, channels of communication that might make all the difference in an emergency.

Recommended: Sochi, Soviets, and tsars: How much do you know about Russia?
Those old tales are taking on urgent new relevance as the crisis over Ukraine drives East-West tensions to levels unseen since the cold war.

Military machines on both sides are engaged in nearly non-stop war games aimed at displaying their readiness to their jittery publics, and scary near-misses between warplanes are multiplying as Russia's Air Force tries to return to its Soviet-era pattern of global patrolling. All this is happening at a time when dialogue, even at the highest levels, is almost nonexistent.

"Not just communications, but other mechanisms that used to exist are simply not working anymore," says Viktor Baranets, a former Russian defense ministry spokesman. "I don't want to sound alarmist, but judging by the rapid pace of events and growing aggressiveness on all sides, we may be moving toward disaster. It's like we're all priming a bomb, but no one knows when or how it will explode. Gradually, we are moving from cold to hot war."

'We should be having these conversations'

The disconnect between the Russian and American militaries is in part a natural result of the end of the cold war. Most of the old coping mechanisms were scrapped after they became unnecessary 25 years ago. That has left fighter pilots and ship captains today without the experience of their cold war predecessors, who were steeled by regular encounters with the enemy.

But as NATO and Russia broke off relations last year amid the escalating spat over Ukraine, communications at lower echelons virtually ended.

Last month NATO announced that it would set up a cold war-style "hotline" with the General Staff in Moscow. But that came even as NATO kicked out dozens of Russians formerly stationed at its Brussels headquarters.

Pentagon officials say the US decision, alongside NATO, to slash military relations with Russia was the right thing to do "in light of Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine." Virtually all bilateral engagements were shut down, including military exercises, bilateral meetings, port visits, and planning conferences. They say they continue to maintain "open lines of communication with Russia."

But some experts worry that the hotline may prove far too little as tensions spiral, snap war drills become larger and more frequent on both sides, and genuine efforts to see the other guy's point of view dwindle.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno says the fall-off in communications is indeed of concern.

"I'm a big believer in no matter how big your disagreements are, it's important that you continue to have discussions," he says. "In my mind, when you're not talking, relationships can deteriorate faster because you can misinterpret - you don't quite understand exactly what's being said, and you don't have the opportunity to discuss the most difficult issues," he told defense reporters on May 28.

"I believe we should be having these conversations, but we're not."

Nuclear troubles

Strategic nuclear weapons are still subject to strict controls. Five years ago Russia and the US signed the New START treaty, which holds the two sides  to defined numbers of warheads and delivery systems. The treaty has its own apparatus for mutual verification and consultation.

But the late-cold-war treaty that banned all medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe is under new strains, with the US accusing Russia of violations and some Russian politicians openly calling for the accord to be scrapped altogether. Russia is also warning that it might deploy nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to its western enclave of Kaliningrad and the newly-annexed territory of Crimea, which could add a nuclear dimension to the standoff.

In the worst case, there is still the "red phone" - not actually a phone, but a priority connection - between the White House and the Kremlin, established in the wake of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. But that's not enough to offset the shift in attitudes.

"Relations are changing in the worst possible direction. We're in a propaganda war, and the realization has dawned that we are not friends," says Viktor Kremeniuk, a veteran Russian America-watcher and author of a new book, "Lessons from the Cold War."

"If something should happen in an area not covered by a specific, preexisting agreement, it's not clear how it would be handled," he says. "Basically, the normal channels of diplomacy are all we've got now."

Growing risk of accident

An air-to-air encounter turned bad is one of the  nightmares that plague officials on both sides. Pentagon officials point to an April 2014 incident, in which a Russian fighter plane buzzed a US reconnaissance aircraft and "put the lives of its crew in jeopardy."

"During the cold war, it was routine anytime our reconnaissance aircraft was looking at them, or them at us, that we would be flying in formation in a very predictable way," says Christopher Harmer, a retired naval officer who served as former deputy director of future operations at the US Navy's Fifth Fleet. That tight formation flying helped keep miscalculations to a minimum, Mr. Harmer says.

But the sort of "reckless" flying demonstrated by the Russian fighter jet represents a shift in tactics. There is little chance it was the act of a show-off pilot, he adds. "Russian pilots don't do rogue."

The US Navy complains of similar close and "provocative" Russian approaches toward its ships in the Black Sea, including an incident last week involving the guided missile destroyer USS Ross. Russian media accounts of the same event stress the defensive actions of Russian military forces in the face of US "aggressive" moves.

Odierno says that he has endeavored to arrange meetings to discuss rules of engagement. "I've actually tried to meet to meet with my Russian counterpart on two separate occasions, and both times they've refused to do that in neutral settings. So it's concerning," because the lack of communication "definitely increases the danger of miscalculations" between the two countries, he says.

"It's depressing to find ourselves back in this situation. Trust is ebbing, tensions are spiking, there's the constant feeling that something could go badly wrong," says Andrei Baklitsky, an expert with the independent PIR Center in Moscow, a think tank specializing in nuclear security issues.

"We need to work out a new set of rules. The way we've been doing things for the past 25 years isn't working in this new situation, so people really need to start talking."

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 #9
Russia does not intend to breach Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty - Lavrov

MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/. US actions in the framework of global missile defense system directly violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists on Tuesday.

"Precisely considering the INF Treaty, our American colleagues have long been asking questions on how responsibly we implement the document," Lavrov said. "We answer that there is a mechanism of Russian-American consultations on reviewing the agreement and possible complaints. We asked the Americans to formulate precisely their complaints and concerns about the Russian Federation," he noted.

The foreign minister said he regrets the fact that over the two rounds of consultations, US failed to specify their suspicions neither at the level of preparations nor during the consultations themselves.

"They only say, 'You test-launched a rocket, you know what we are talking about'," he continued. "But this not a serious talk. We will be ready to consider concrete evidence that gives Americans grounds to think that we violated something," Lavrov stressed.

"We have formulated our rather concrete questions to the American side that we think that a number of actions it takes, including in the framework of deploying the global missile defense system, directly violate the INF Treaty," Lavrov said.

"I still confirm this officially. We are open for an honest, but specific, not unsubstantiated dialogue in order to remove any concerns," Lavrov stressed. "We do not have any intentions to break this agreement," he added.

US militarist rhetoric 'counterproductive'

The minister called the US rhetoric counterproductive and harmful.

Lavrov commented on the statement of US General Martin Dempsey on Washington's plans to deploy its cruise and ballistic missiles in Europe and Asia that might be targeted against Russia.

"We hear these statements and we study them, and here it is very important to understand what he meant in particular as sometimes these statements are taken out of context," Lavrov said.

Lavrov stressed that these issues are "too serious to react off the top of one's head."

"In principle, we believe it is absolutely counterproductive and harmful to build up militarist rhetoric, moreover that all our partners say unanimously that they do not want the return of the Cold War time," he said.

"If this is so in fact, then one should be probably more careful when saying," Lavrov said.

Lavrov said there are concerns about issues related to military construction and these concerns are always addressed and they need to be solved further through a "direct and frank dialogue," the minister said.

"We had these opportunities with all our Western partners both in a bilateral framework and in the framework of the NATO-Russia Council," he reminded.
These communication channels were frozen not due to Moscow's fault but upon the initiative of the Western partners, including those in the 2 plus 2 format, when foreign ministers and defence ministers met, Lavrov said.

US statements on Russia's INF treaty breach used as excuse for own breaches

Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly antonov on Tuesday said the United States keeps alleging Russia is in breach of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force treaty in order to excuse its own steps Washington presents as retaliatory.

"One has the impression the United States is making a fuss about alleged Russian violations to create a pretext for implementing its own, ostensibly retaliatory military steps, expected to assert US leadership in resisting a Russian military threat - a myth Washington keeps inflating in defiance of obvious facts," Antonov said.

He remarked that the Russian Defense Ministry had taken note of the timing of the media leaks with calls for joint actions by the United States and its allies to compensate for Russia's alleged violations of the INF treaty.

"These publications were timed for another upsurge in the anti-Russian campaign in the West ahead of the G7 summit meeting and the forthcoming EU summit, which will be discussing the prolongation of anti-Russian sanctions," Antonov said.

"We would like to draw the United States' attention to the extremely dangerous effects for international security and stability this policy regarding the INF treaty might bring about," Antonov said.

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#10
Military analysts: West embarks on dangerous path of ruining nuclear deterrence
By Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/. British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond's speculations his country might agree to host US missiles armed with nuclear warheads and the United States' allegations Russia is in breach of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 are counter-productive moves that may ruin nuclear deterrence, polled military experts familiar with strategic nuclear potential specifics have told TASS.

Hammond mentioned the possibility the United Kingdom might agree to accommodate nuclear-armed US intermediate range missiles in a Sunday interview to the BBC. He said NATO members were watching with alarm Moscow's growing military activity, for instance, the deployment of "very substantial numbers of missiles in the Kaliningrad Region."

At the NPT review conference in New York last April US Secretary of State John Kerry reproached Moscow of "clear violations" of the INF treaty.
The director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's non-proliferation and arms control department, Mikhail Ulyanov, who led the Russian delegation, dismissed Washington's charges as groundless. Moscow has its own INF compliance grievances addressed to Washington. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a certain point said Moscow had repeatedly invited the White House to enter into "specific consultations" on the theme only to hear nothing in reply.

Deputy director of the Institute of US and Canada Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pavel Zolotaryov, believes that Hammond's statement should be regarded from the standpoint of anti-Russian rhetoric the West noticeably stepped up of late.

"Before it can bring its nuclear missiles to Britain Washington will have to quit the INF Treaty. In the meantime, the White House is by no means interested in this," Major-General Zolotaryov, retired, who at a certain point held a senior position at the Strategic Nuclear Force Staff, has told TASS.

"Russia complied with the terms of the INF treaty long ago. When Moscow and Washington in 2010 agreed further steps to reduce and limit strategic offensive armaments (START-III), the need for a special INF treaty compliance watchdog was overlooked. It was a major technical flaw. But when the Ukrainian crisis flared up, the US-led western world thought it was the right moment for a restart of Cold War-style saber-rattling again, so it began to utter threats it might deploy ground-launched missiles in Europe and US cruise missiles in Britain," Zolotaryov said.

"In order to settle mutual complaints the most appropriate step to be taken at the moment would be to resume the activities of the INF compliance commission. But it remains to be seen whether the United States is really interested in this. So far Washington has used every convenient pretext for stepping up threats against Russia," Zolotaryov said.

What makes the current anti-Russian rhetoric so risky is the West often acts on its words. In the course of the ongoing NATO military exercise Saber Strike-2015, underway near Russia's western border two US strategic B-2 stealth bombers - the New York and the Missouri, capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons, arrived in Britain to land at the RAF Fairford base, which is the sole airdrome in Europe where planes of this type can land and undergo maintenance. US ships participating in NATO's exercises in the Black Sea repeatedly stayed in the area longer than allowed. Rhetoric will be rhetoric, but the Pentagon runs the risk of breaking the limits someday," Zolotaryov warned.

A former commander of the Strategic Missile Force, General Vladimir Yakovlev, retired, warns that hypothetical deployment of US nuclear missiles in Britain would spell the severing of the INF treaty. "This would entail the abrogation of START-III and utter destabilization of the world situation. The collapse of all international nuclear non-proliferation commitments would follow," Yakovlev said. "Behind Hammond's statement I can see the United States' wish to see what Moscow's response may be like. Russia has enough resources to counter these challenges," Yakovlev said with certainty.

Moscow's latest response the INF issue was formulated by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday afternoon, following talks with his Salvadoran counterpart Hugo Martinez Bonilla.

"I prefer a professional, scrupulous approach, without improvisations," Lavrov said. "We have heard these statements (about the United States' intention to deploy ballistic missiles in Asia and in Europe - TASS). "We are studying them. It is important to understand what was said and who said it, because sometime statements are taken out of the context."

"These issues are too serious for us to react to them off the cuff," Lavrov said, when asked by TASS about remarks by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the United States might deploy its cruise and ballistic missiles in Europe.

"Fundamentally, we regard the fanning of belligerent rhetoric as absolutely counterproductive and harmful. The more so, since all of our partners have been saying in chorus they do not wish to see a return of the Cold War," Lavrov said. "But if this is really so, then they should be more cautious about the things they say aloud."

"In practical terms there inevitably emerge concerns over military matters. These concerns are invariably settled and they should continue to be settled through a direct and frank dialogue," Lavrov said.

"We did have such opportunities in relations with our Western partners - both bilateral and in the context of the Russia-NATO Council," he recalled. "All those channels of communication between military agencies were frozen, and not at our initiative, but at the initiative of our partners. The same applies to the two-plus-two format mechanisms we had shared with Britain and the United States, which brought together foreign and defense ministers.
 

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 #11
RIA Novosti
June 8, 2015
Russia sets out what it wants from USA, NATO, EU in new foreign policy document

Russia reserves the right to respond to any unfriendly steps towards it taken by the USA, says the document containing a review of the Russian Foreign Ministry's performance in 2014 and medium-term objectives, as reported by RIA Novosti (part of the state-owned International News Agency Rossiya Segodnya) on 8 June.

"In constructing our engagement with the American side, we cannot help taking into account the steps taken by Barack Obama's administration at their own initiative to increase bilateral tension, in effect freeze contacts in most areas and consistently build up the pressure of sanctions against Russia with the aim of weakening the Russian economy and creating conditions for 'shaking up' the internal political situation. We reserve the right to respond appropriately to all unfriendly steps towards us," RIA Novosti quoted the document saying.

It also said that a way out of the spiral of confrontation and a return to stable bilateral relations was only possible "if Washington stopped hostile actions towards Russia and the White House reaffirmed in practice its readiness for dialogue based on the principle of true equality and mutual respect of interests".

Another RIA Novosti report quoted the document saying: "We believe that the two countries have a special responsibility for maintaining international peace and stability, we remain open to contacts on the situation in Ukraine, the Syrian crisis, the Iranian nuclear programme, the settlement of conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, and other matters of mutual interest".

NATO

On NATO, the document says that "we believe that the resumption of a full-scale dialogue with NATO on security and strategic stability is only possible on the basis of equality and provided that our national interests in the area of stability are taken into account in practice".

The Foreign Ministry also said Moscow believed it was justified in using the remaining channel of political dialogue within the NATO-Russia Council and bilateral contacts with representatives of key member states to explain the adverse effects and potential dangers of changing the existing configuration of forces in Europe, a later RIA Novosti report said.

European Union

On relations with the EU, a report by Russian state-owned TASS news agency (formerly ITAR-TASS) quoted the document saying: "Despite the complexities of the current moment, relations with European Union, our neighbour and major trade and economic partner, will objectively remain one of the priorities of Russian foreign policy in the next few years. We remain ready for a meaningful dialogue with the EU in the interests of promoting the project of 'integrating integrations', and forming in future a single economic and humanitarian space from the Atlantic to the Pacific based on the principles of equal and indivisible security."

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 #12
The National Interest
June 7, 2015
Russia's Deceptively Weak Military
"Despite the technical improvements and selective increase in operational capability, the Russian military remains a shadow of its perceived capability."
By Andrew S. Bowen
Andrew S. Bowen is a Ph.D Candidate in Political Science at Boston College

Professional soldiers, equipped with the latest weaponry and body armor, quickly and efficiently seized Crimea. A rebellion, with "indigenous" rebels suddenly equipped with heavy weaponry and sufficient coordination, quickly metastasized into a full blown insurgency. New, modern and impressive equipment paraded before Moscow and the world in the largest Victory Day Parade since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The recent activities and public displays of modern equipment leave the impression that Russia has begun fielding a first rate military again, commensurate with its aspirations of being a global power. The role and visibility of the "little green men" in recent months leave an impression of a well-trained and coordinated Russian military, increasingly equipped with state of the art equipment. The takeover of the Crimea peninsula was supremely impressive. It was well executed with professional units. The Airborne (VDV), Naval Infantry and Spetsnaz that were responsible for seizing the initial key points around Crimea were impressive not only for their coordination but their professionalism in the face of journalistic interest. The seizure of Crime was shocking both for the audaciousness of the Kremlin, but also in terms of military capability. Few realized that Russia had the capability to conduct an operation like Crimea. And with increasing concern over the potential return of fighting in Eastern Ukraine, the fears over a resurgent Russian military continue to menace.

Yet, little attention has been paid to what actually constitutes the Russian military. Indeed, many commentators lauding the return of the Russian military have pointed to the plans and statements of the Russian military, focusing on the toys used more than actual capabilities.

Beyond the public displays lays a more complicated view with more nuanced realities. While Russia has produced new technological toys (such as the Armata series tanks and armored vehicles), Moscow's ability to pay and sustain modernization efforts leaves lingering doubts about a resurgent Russian military. Despite the almost ebullient hysteria surrounding Russia's new equipment and capabilities, its military is still hampered by structural, economic and strategic constraints that not only limit its evolution and growth, but also threaten its current progress.

The "New Look" modernization effort Russia began in 2008 has created two militaries; an elite (or more professional) force capable of conducting rapid, complex operations with generally modern equipment; and the rest of the military, which still relies upon conscription, mass mobilization and mixed levels of modern equipment.

Even among the "little green men," the outlook is far more mixed than the Crimea annexation would suggest. Most spetsnaz are actually conscripts on one year terms, although they do get the pick of the conscription call up. As Mark Galeotti notes, "the bulk of spetsnazovets may arguably best be compared with the French Foreign Legion, the British 16th Air Assault Brigade or the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment, in that they are elite, mobile light infantry able to function in a range of operations and climates, and optimized for interventions, but not a 'Tier One' special operations force." Moscow does retain around 500 tier one troops (equitable to Delta or Seal Team Six) in a separate force, which were utilized in seizing the Crimean parliament.

And while the more elite units of the military are starting to embrace small unit independence and rapid deployment, the conventional Russian military continues to be influenced by the old Soviet structure of numerous under-manned units, pre-positioned with equipment to be brought up to full staffing levels during times of conflict. The drawbacks of this design were laid bare during the 2008 war with Georgia, where airborne units (VDV) were able to deploy faster from interior Russia than those units stationed in the Caucasus. The 2008 modernization effort sought to replace this unwieldy division structure with smaller, more agile and autonomous Brigades. Although, the efforts to reduce the reliance upon mass mobilization and undermanned units continue, this trend has been somewhat reversed as some divisions have been brought back.

Despite plans for fully staffed units, the troops injected into Ukraine have been pulled from fully (or partially) staffed subunits all across Russia and thrown together to fulfill requirements. Reports of casualties of "Russian volunteers" are indicative of troops from various regions and units being put together for mission specific operations (although most have come from the elite Paratrooper and Spetsnaz).  Even with the efforts to eliminate the mass mobilization structure of the Army, most units remain woefully undermanned.

The vacillation between unit structures is in part confounded by the same strategic issues that have always plagued Russia. It has too few men to guard its borders and the diverse threats the country faces. Russia today must have a technologically advanced military to guard against NATO, a counter-insurgency force for rapid deployment in the Caucasus and Central Asia, forces for the increasingly competitive Arctic, and a large conventional force able to guard against threats in the Far East. Russia is still debating how to balance between guarding against all threats and fielding more efficient unit structures.

Complementing plans to increase units to permanent readiness status have been efforts to increase the level of professional troops, kontrakniki. These efforts have fallen considerably short (the retention rate for kontrakniki remains unacceptably low, and recruitment targets are struggling to keep up with the attrition rate). Slightly increased housing, pay and status have remained unconvincing to most of Russian society. Efforts to recruit kontrakniki were also designed to create an NCO corps that the Russian military never had (not to mention never having a professional recruiting corps that has also limited the recruitment of professional soldiers). NCO roles in western armies are filled in the Russian military by lower level officers, contributing to a bloated officer corps. While many nations do not retain a professional NCO corps (China), experienced NCOs are crucial not only to manage the increasingly technical components of warfare (especially with the emphasis on increasing the military's network-centric and C4ISR capabilities), but also to ensure the proper training and readiness of the units. As much as Russia has announced and displayed its modern army, it is still reliant upon the conscription of its youth to project its great power status.

In terms of new equipment, it is easy to look at specifications and be impressed by details. However, this ignores considerations of how these systems will actually operate. The new toys Russia displayed during May 9th parade-such as the Armata T-14 tank, Kurganets 25, T-15 IFV and Boomerang-are extremely impressive in isolation, and do represent a dramatic revolution in Russian armament design (although it remains to be seen if they can produce high quality optics domestically. Russia currently imports its optics from Thales for its T-90 tanks).

And while their actual utilization will represent large increases in capability for the Russian military, their utility is constrained by their ability to arrive on the battlefield. Russian strategic transport capabilities remain woefully lacking and still rely upon rail transportation, with little improvement of air and sea transport, limiting the Russian military's capacity to rapidly reorient its forces. The Kurganets 25 IFV, for example, is ten tons heavier than previous BMP units, making it far more difficult to rapidly transport to conflict zones. The Soviet military compensated for its inadequate transportation infrastructure by pre-positioning large equipment depots to supply conscripts once they arrive. This strategy is inadequate in a threat environment relying upon the rapid movement of troops (and equipment) to emerging crisis. While the Airborne (VDV), Naval Infantry and Spetsnaz units retain sufficient logistical support to conduct operations like Crimea, the same cannot be said for the regular troops necessary to support those rapid deployments.

Despite the issues over strategic design, manning and transportation, economic considerations may well determine the extent of Russia's grand military designs. As Dmitry Gorenburg notes, with the economy suffering from sanctions, investment flight and low oil prices, "the money allocated may not be sufficient to build what they want to build." The situation is succinctly summed up by one of Russia's most famous economists (now in self-imposed exile in Paris) Sergei Guriev, "In any case, Kudrin's economic and financial logic is even more valid today than it was at his dismissal from office. If Russia could not afford a 4 percent-of-GDP defense budget in good times, it cannot possibly manage such a high rate of military spending now, when it confronts rock-bottom oil prices, Western sanctions and economic recession."

Russia has dramatically improved its military capabilities, professionalism and training since the beginning of its 2008 modernization. Despite the technical improvements and selective increase in operational capability, the Russian military remains a shadow of its perceived capability. For nations around its periphery Russia remains a prominent and capable threat. Beyond its periphery, Russia is far weaker than would be perceived. Its displays of strength hide a much more complicated operational capability, and why its nuclear arsenal-and incendiary statements pointing to it-remain integral to Russia's security posture. The actual ability to deploy the cool new toys dictates just how threatening they really are.

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 #13
The National Interest
June 8, 2015
America Sends Nuclear Bombers to Russia's Doorstep
By Zachary Keck
Zachary Keck is managing editor of The National Interest

America is sending three nuclear-capable bombers to Russia's borders to participate in a military exercise near the Baltics and Poland.

On Friday, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) announced that three B-52 Stratofortresses were being sent on a short-term deployment to the Royal Air Force (RAF) in Fairford, United Kingdom. They will be joined by two B-2s.

During the deployment, however, the three B-52 bombers will "conduct training flights with ground and naval forces around the region and participate in multinational Exercises BALTOPS 15 and SABER STRIKE 15 over international waters in the Baltic Sea and the territory of the Baltic states and Poland," STRATCOM said in a press release.

It went on to explain: "The bombers will integrate into several exercise activities, including air intercept training, simulated mining operations during SABER STRIKE, inert ordnance drops during BALTOPS, and close air support."

SABER STRIKE is an annual exercise the United States has held with European allies since 2010. The purpose of the exercise is to coordinate the United States' providing close air support to European ground forces.

According to the U.S. Army Europe's website, this year's exercise will include participants from Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States. However, the U.S. Army Europe has indicated that particularly close attention will be given to integrating U.S. forces with those from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, and the exercises themselves will also take place inside those countries.

BALTOPS is a U.S.-led primarily maritime exercise held with NATO allies and other European partners every year. This year, the 43rd annual BALTOPS exercise is taking place between June 5-20 in in Poland, Sweden, Germany, and throughout the Baltic Sea. The participants in year's BALTOPS exercise include Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The U.S. Navy has previously said that roughly "5,600 ground, maritime and air forces from participating nations will conduct air defense, maritime interdiction, anti-subsurface warfare, and amphibious operations in a joint environment." It has also noted that, "A total of 49 ships, 61 aircraft, one submarine, and a combined landing force of 700 Swedish, Finnish, and U.S. troops are scheduled to participate."

News that the bombers will participate in SABER STRIKE and the BALTOPS come as the United States tries to ratchet up pressure against Russia.

On Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter convened a meeting in Germany with U.S. military commanders and fourteen ambassadors to discuss how to deal with Russia. The meeting included about 40 individuals, according to press reports, including the heads of the the Department of Defense's Africa, Pacific, Middle East, special operations and cyber commands.  Following that meeting, Carter told reporters that the United States plans to step up the number of military exercises it conducts in Europe in order to enhance preparedness.  

Increasing pressure against Russia was also expected to be President Obama's top priority during the G7 meeting held in Germany on Sunday and Monday. A joint communique issued by the G7 leaders warned that "We ... stand ready to take further restrictive measures in order to increase cost on Russia should its actions so require." Obama separately accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of harboring a "wrongheaded desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire."

A lengthy report from the Wall Street Journal this weekend also said the Obama administration is having internal discussions about various deterrence strategies it may adopt to deal with Russia in Europe. According to the report, some of the measures being debated include stepped up military exercises and more pre-positioning of weapons stocks near Russia's borders.

The deployment of the B-52s also comes as Russia has stepped up the numbers of bombers it has sent into U.S. airspace. Adm. William Gortney, the chief of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told the Washington Times on Monday that the number of Russian incursions into U.S. airspace in 2014 was double the average dating back to 2006.
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 #14
Reuters
June 8, 2015
Obama Says Putin on Doomed Drive to Recreate Soviet Glories

KRUN - U.S. President Barack Obama accused President Vladimir Putin of wrecking Russia's economy in a doomed drive to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire and G7 leaders said they could step up sanctions against Moscow if violence in Ukraine escalated.

At the conclusion of a Group of Seven summit in the Bavarian Alps, leaders expressed concern about an upsurge in fighting in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have clashed with Kiev's troops in violation of a cease-fire agreed in April.

The strongest rhetoric came from Obama, who told a news conference the Russian people were suffering severely because of Putin's policies.

It was the second summit of the group of leading industrial nations to exclude Russia since Putin was frozen out of what used to be the G8 after Moscow's annexation of Crimea last year, a move the G7 condemned in their communique as "illegal."

"He's got to make a decision," Obama said of Putin. "Does he continue to wreck his country's economy and continue Russia's isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire, or does he recognize that Russia's greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries."

The Kremlin played down Putin's absence from the summit, saying he preferred "other formats" that were more effective and better reflected the balance of global economic power.

"It's impossible now to get together in seven or eight people and effectively discuss global problems," the RIA news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

G7 sources said the Ukraine crisis and how to handle Russia had taken up two-thirds of the discussion at a Sunday dinner devoted to foreign policy.

One source, describing the Ukraine economy as a "catastrophe," said there was a consensus among the leaders that the country could not be allowed to fail.

Canada's Stephen Harper and Japan's Shinzo Abe both visited Kiev before the G7 summit and voiced strong support for President Petro Poroshenko, the sources said.

Sanctions

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit host, who has led diplomacy to engage Putin in a diplomatic solution to the conflict, told reporters that sanctions against Russia could be lifted if Moscow and the separatists fully implemented a peace deal struck in the Belarus capital Minsk earlier this year.

But she added that Europe and the United States were also prepared to toughen sanctions. German officials said this would be necessary if separatists seized more territory in eastern Ukraine, especially around the strategic port city of Mariupol.

Poroshenko told his military last week to prepare for a "full-scale invasion" by Russia in response to an upsurge in fighting, which has gone far beyond the low-level skirmishing seen in recent months.

"As we've seen again in recent days, Russian forces continue to operate in eastern Ukraine, violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Obama said.

"Russia is in deep recession. So Russia's actions in Ukraine are hurting Russia and hurting the Russian people. And the G7 is making it clear that if necessary we stand ready to impose additional significant sanctions against Russia."

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#15
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
June 8, 2015
Remarks by President Obama in Press Conference after G7 Summit (excerpts)
Elmau Briefing Center
Krün, Germany

PRESIDENT OBAMA: With respect to security, the G7 remains strongly united in support for Ukraine.  We'll continue to provide economic support and technical assistance that Ukraine needs as it moves ahead on critical reforms to transform its economy and strengthen its democracy.  As we've seen again in recent days, Russian forces continue to operate in eastern Ukraine, violating Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.  This is now the second year in a row that the G7 has met without Russia -- another example of Russia's isolation -- and every member of the G7 continues to maintain sanctions on Russia for its aggression against Ukraine.
 
Now, it's important to recognize the Russian economy has been seriously weakened.  The ruble and foreign investment are down; Inflation is up.  The Russian central bank has lost more than $150 billion in reserves.  Russian banks and firms are virtually locked out of the international markets.  Russian energy companies are struggling to import the services and technologies they need for complex energy projects.  Russian defense firms have been cut off from key technologies.  Russia is in deep recession.  So Russia's actions in Ukraine are hurting Russia and hurting the Russian people.
 
Here at the G7, we agreed that even as we will continue to seek a diplomatic solution, sanctions against Russia will remain in place so long as Russia continues to violate its obligations under the Minsk agreements.  Our European partners reaffirmed that they will maintain sanctions on Russia until the Minsk agreements are fully implemented, which means extending the EU's existing sectoral sanctions beyond July.  And the G7 is making it clear that, if necessary, we stand ready to impose additional, significant sanctions against Russia....  
 
Q  You mentioned that the U.S. and its European allies have reached a consensus on extending the sanctions against Russia.  Is there a consensus, though, about what specifically the next step should be if Russia continues to violate the Minsk agreement?  And also, can you deter Russian aggression in other parts of Eastern Europe without a permanent U.S. troop presence?...
 
PRESIDENT OBAMA:  On Ukraine and Russia and Minsk, there is strong consensus that we need to keep pushing Russia to abide by the terms of the Minsk agreement; we need to continue to support and encourage Ukraine to meet its obligations under Minsk -- that until that's completed, sanctions remain in place.
 
There was discussion about additional steps that we might need to take if Russia, working through separatists, doubled down on aggression inside of Ukraine.  Those discussions are taking place at a technical level, not yet at a political level -- because I think the first goal here going into a European Council meeting that's coming up is just rolling over the existing sanctions.  But I think at a technical level, we want to be prepared.
 
Our hope is, is that we don't have to take additional steps because the Minsk agreement is met.  And I want to give enormous credit to Chancellor Merkel, along with President Hollande, who have shown extraordinary stick-to-itiveness and patience in trying to get that done.
 
Ultimately, this is going to be an issue for Mr. Putin.  He's got to make a decision:  Does he continue to wreck his country's economy and continue Russia's isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to re-create the glories of the Soviet empire?  Or does he recognize that Russia's greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries?
 
And as I mentioned earlier, the costs that the Russian people are bearing are severe.  That's being felt.  It may not always be understood why they're suffering, because of state media inside of Russia and propaganda coming out of state media in Russia and to Russian speakers.  But the truth of the matter is, is that the Russian people would greatly benefit.  And, ironically, one of the rationales that Mr. Putin provided for his incursions into Ukraine was to protect Russian speakers there.  Well, Russian speakers inside of Ukraine are precisely the ones who are bearing the brunt of the fighting.  Their economy has collapsed.  Their lives are disordered.  Many of them are displaced.  Their homes may have been destroyed.  They're suffering.  And the best way for them to stop suffering is if the Minsk agreement is fully implemented....
 

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#16
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
June 9, 2015
The Lights Are on in Washington, but Nobody's Home
Barack Obama claims that Putin is trying to "recreate the glories of the Soviet empire". The question is whether this is a genuine misunderstanding or a more purposeful and politically expedient one.
By Danielle Ryan
Danielle Ryan is an Irish journalist and blogger. She has a degree in Business and German from Trinity College Dublin and studied political reporting at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism in Washington, DC. Special interests: American politics and foreign policy, US-Russia relations and media bias. Her blog can be found at journalitico.com.

It's been nearly a month since John Kerry's amicable reunion with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, but it might as well have been a decade, because the gulf between what is said in Moscow and what is understood - or more appropriately, misunderstood - in Washington, is as wide as ever.

Any predictions that the US was about to change tactics in its Russia strategy were premature.

That was thoroughly confirmed by Barack Obama's words at the conclusion of the G7 summit in the Bavarian Alps yesterday when he accused Putin of trying to "recreate the glories of the Soviet empire".

The question is whether this is a genuine misunderstanding or a more purposeful and politically expedient one. I'd be inclined to believe it's the latter. The reality is, Obama has a team of Russia advisors who monitor Putin's every utterance. They watch every move he makes, whether at home or abroad, and analyse it intensely. If you're unconvinced, note the Pentagon report dedicated to deciphering his body language, which concluded - based solely on videos of his public appearances - that he has Asperger's Syndrome.

Now, either the White House and Pentagon have hired some really terribly inept analysts, or these reports are a deliberate exercise in confirmation bias.

Putin's latest and lengthy interview, given to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera ahead of his trip to Rome, will no doubt have been dissected to the last breath - and yet the conclusions that have been made bear little resemblance to reality.

At this point, even NATO fans who worried about Putin's supposed forthcoming Baltic adventure a year ago must now be wondering whether it was really all a fuss over nothing. There has been not a single feasible indication yet that Putin has any interest at all in the Baltic states. More ludicrous still, is the idea that he'd take it upon himself to wander into Poland and hope for the best. And yet the suggestion is trotted out with surprising frequency.

It is utterly inconceivable, based on his public statements and geopolitical manoeuvrings thus far, that any determination could be made that Putin is interested in reviving the old USSR. Even the notion that Crimea's reunification with Russia was some sort of signal to that effect, does not hold water.

Putin told the Italian newspaper that the Crimea scenario does not reflect some sort of Russian interventionist modus operandi, rather it was a special case, which reflected the "position of the people" who live there. Therefore, it's probably safe to assume that the three NATO-member Baltics are going to remain as such for the foreseeable future. Or as Putin put it, "only an insane person" could imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO.

In fact, one of the most lengthy answers he gave the newspaper was in response to a question about the West's belief that the "Russian bear" must be subdued and the idea that Russia speaks to its partners with a "contentious" tone.

Russia's foreign policy is "not global, offensive or aggressive," he said.

With military spending ten times less than that of NATO, almost no bases abroad and no full-blown military invasions since the Russian Federation came into being (save for a six-day war with Georgia, prompted and provoked by the country's now fugitive president Mikheil Saakashvili), what right-thinking person could argue with that?

As an example of Russian "aggression" the West likes to point to Russia's behaviour in the seas and skies. Flights over the Baltic, mystery "submarines" stalking Stockholm, dangerous jaunts around the British Isles. Never mind that the Baltic is Russia's back yard or that the US flies spy planes over the area whenever it likes (including one incident just a day after the downing of MH17 when the US Air Force decided to play chicken with the Russian military, quickly fleeing into Swedish airspace without permission when they were detected).

What nobody ever seems to mention, but which Putin points out for the second time in recent months, is that Russia put an end to these flights completely after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Still, he said, "Our American friends continued to fly along our borders. Why? Some years ago, we resumed these flights. And you want to say that we have been aggressive?"

As for the submarines, he points out that there are American subs on permanent alert off the coast of Norway, equipped with missiles that could reach Moscow within 17 minutes. You might be thinking, don't be insane, the US is never really going to use them - and you'd be right. That is indeed an unimaginable scenario. But if Russia is forced to accept that no unpredictable military threat exists from the US, why isn't the US forced to do the same?

It's possible to detect a certain level of disillusionment from Putin in these interviews. There is a sense that he is exasperated by having to repeat the same thing over and over, only to have it fall on deaf ears each time. But more than that, there's a sense of genuine disappointment that relations with the US have deteriorated so drastically. Remember, this was a president who actually floated the idea that Russia itself would join NATO shortly after he first came to power.

"We do not see it [NATO] as an enemy. We do not see a tragedy in its existence, but we also see no need for it," he said in 2001.

He then proposed a "single security and defense space in Europe," which could be achieved either by disbanding NATO entirely or by offering membership to Russia. Such a move, he said, would balance out European security by taking all nations' concerns into account. In all likelihood, we would not be having the same discussion about Russia today if his suggestion had been taken seriously 14 years ago.

A recent documentary shown by Rossiya 1 confirmed some of this aforementioned disillusionment. Speaking about the fall of the USSR and the thawing of US-Russia relations, Putin said: "I believed that once the ideological barrier had fallen and the Communist party no longer had a monopoly on power, things would change fundamentally [ in our relationship]. But no."

When two people are at odds with each other over something - even if they hate each other with a fiery passion - they usually understand that a solution, if there is to be one, requires that they meet each other halfway. Geopolitics really is no different. Either you compromise and everyone shares the fruits of a less than ideal victory, or you refuse to budge, and everyone eventually loses.

There are plenty of reasons why the US might feel that the lose-lose option is the best one for the time-being. First and foremost, they are still hoping that Putin will break first. It's a short-sighted strategy, but it's the one they're sticking to.

So Putin can talk all he wants, but he might be better saving his breath. The lights are on in Washington, but nobody's home.

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#17
Wall Street Journal
June 9, 2015
How To Take Down Putin
Boycotting the World Cup would be one hard lesson for Russians of the consequences of being led by disreputable men.
By BRET STEPHENS
Bret Stephens writes "Global View," the Wall Street Journal's foreign-affairs column, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2013. He is the paper's deputy editorial page editor, responsible for the international opinion pages of the Journal, and a member of the paper's editorial board. He is also a regular panelist on the Journal Editorial Report, a weekly political talk show broadcast on Fox News Channel.

You don't need to mention 1936 to know dictatorships place great stock in hosting major international sporting events. They confer legitimacy; they project virility. Denying both to Vladimir Putin should be a part of any plan to unseat him.

So it's instructive and amusing to read former FIFA official Chuck Blazer's account, on his personal blog, of his 2010 meeting with Mr. Putin, shortly before Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup.

"At one moment he looked at me with a very serious gaze and said, without cracking a smile, 'You know, you look like Karl Marx,' " Mr. Blazer recounted of his meeting. "I simply winked at him and said, 'I know.' This brought an immediate response with him lifting his right arm up in the air and thrusting it forward to give me my first High-5 from a Prime Minister."

Score one for Karl.

Mr. Blazer wound up voting for Russia's bid, having initially favored Britain's. He has since confessed to accepting millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks in connection with the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and at least four international tournaments in the Americas. The Russian government, for its part, has a reputation for being generous toward its foreign friends.

There's no need to put two and two together here, since the FBI and Swiss prosecutors are taking a closer look at the Russian bid and FIFA may wind up revoking it. But why not at least threaten a boycott of the Cup for as long as Russian troops remain in Ukraine? The average Russian couldn't care less that the deputy prime minister is under international sanctions for Moscow's seizure of Crimea. But soccer-mad Russians would care, a lot, if the games were taken from them.

Particularly if the reason for it is properly explained. As of last November, a poll found that a narrow majority of Russians seem to believe Mr. Putin when he insists "outright and unequivocally that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine." But that lie is becoming harder to sustain in the face of the hundreds of Russian military deaths sustained in the conflict, which is why Mr. Putin ordered last week that Russian fatalities in peacetime "special operations" be kept a state secret.

Vladimir's splendid little war is becoming less splendid. Warning Russians that their precious World Cup may be boycotted on account of Mr. Putin's adventures would underscore the unsplendid part.

This is what the G-7 leaders, starting with Barack Obama, failed to understand when they decided over the weekend to maintain economic sanctions on Russia for at least a few more months. They think the primary point of sanctions is to be punitive, economically speaking, when they ought to be pedagogical, morally and politically speaking. What Russians need isn't more financial upheaval and deprivation. (They've seen worse.) They need re-education in how an ostensibly great nation behaves in the modern world.

The point was brought home by the same November poll, which found that a plurality of Russians, or 43%, would approve of Mr. Putin sending Russian soldiers to Ukraine in spite of his denials. In other words, they don't mind being lied to by their president, because they share his territorial and ethnic ambitions.

Such is the combination of cynicism and grandiosity that lies at the heart of Russia's political pathology and that Mr. Putin has so skillfully exploited. Too frequently, Russians have no expectations as to the probity or decency of their leaders. But they have great expectations of their entitlements as a world power. It needs to be the opposite.

Boycotting the 2018 Cup, or showing that it was gained by corrupt means (and thereby lost), would be one hard lesson for Russians of the consequences of being led by disreputable men. A policy of arming Ukraine so that it can inflict heavier-and undeniable-losses on its invaders is another.

So too would be a much broader application of the Magnitsky Act, which imposes travel bans and asset freezes on Russian officials suspected of corruption and human-rights abuses. The current list covers 30 people. Expand it 10- or 50-fold, and you could even start to make Mr. Putin unpopular within the Kremlin.

Since taking power 15 years ago, Mr. Putin has proved a master at self-reinvention, by turns a modernizer or a traditionalist, a capitalist or a conqueror, a populist or an emperor-all in ways that have consolidated his power without running afoul of public opinion. The worst he's done is alienate the intelligentsia and middle classes of Moscow and St. Petersburg, who have obliged him by leaving the country.

If Mr. Putin is to be taken down, it will only happen when the rest of the country swings against him, not necessarily because he's made them poorer, but because he's humiliated them. When it comes to humiliation, nothing is so bad as an own-goal, both in soccer and in war. Time to force the play.
 

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 #18
Brookings Institution
June 7, 2015
Russia is not strong. And Putin is even weaker.
By Pavel K. Baev
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe

Sergey Aleksashenko wants everyone to stop calling Russia weak. He contends that Russia is actually stronger than many people believe-to include U.S. President Barack Obama and British military historian Lawrence Freedman among other prominent voices. But Russia is weak and Russian President Vladimir Putin is even weaker. Aleksashenko misunderstands Russian strength because he makes three critical errors. First, he assumes that strength and weakness are static and so fails to look at trends. Second, by focusing on the weakest of Russia's neighbors, he fails to notice that most Eastern European states are not intimidated by Russia. Finally, he wrongly believes that Russia's strengths can be effectively used by Putin to maintain his grip on power. [http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/05/29-russia-not-weak-aleksashenko]

First, strength and weakness are dynamic-that is, they change over time. In spite of Russia's current displays of military strength in Ukraine, the former superpower is steadily and irreversibly weakening. As Aleksashenko knows-better than most officials in Moscow, in fact-Russia's current economic crisis cannot be willed into recovery, and the economy is set to break through one false bottom after another.

What is less obvious for many Russia-watchers is that the military strength demonstrated so pompously on the Red Square during the May 9 Victory Day parade is also in decline. In Ukraine, the lack of any meaningful political or strategic Russian goals erodes the morale of the troops who are clandestinely deployed there. Nervous about the domestic political consequences of growing casualties, Putin has classified information about warzone deaths as a state secret. The costs of the war are mounting, and over-spending in the Armaments 2020 priority procurement program is yet another item in the list of embarrassing fiscal setbacks. It is clear to serious Russian economists that military expenditures have been out of control for the last four quarters at least. Such spending cannot be sustained indefinitely, and deep cuts in the defense budget are certain this year.

Second, Alakshashenko's description of Russian intimidation of its neighbors misses that many of Russia's neighbors do not find it fearsome. While Georgia sees the need to tread carefully and avoid confrontation (even when signing an association agreement with the EU), Estonia and Latvia have turned their exposure to Russian pressure into a strategic advantage, requesting and receiving substantial support from NATO. Moscow continues its military provocations in the Baltic theater, but it realizes that the military balance there is ultimately not in its favor. In the Arctic, Finland has joined the international Arctic Challenge 2015 exercise, which makes use of the Rovaniemi air base; Finland is apparently unperturbed by the fact that Russia's newly-formed Arctic brigade is deployed just 30 miles across the border from this city.  

It is prudent of NATO to be vigilant along its northern flank, but Russia has little or no capacity for simultaneously waging two "hybrid wars." Back in 1940, Stalin amassed some 600,000 troops for the swift occupation of three defenseless Baltic states; now, Putin can deploy only about 50,000 troops for the (very probable) upcoming offensive in Donbass.

Finally, even the strengths that Russia genuinely possesses do not necessarily strengthen President Vladimir Putin's grasp on power. The example of Russian gas exports to Europe is a case in point. As Aleksashenko rightly points out, Russia has leverage in some ways. Russian gas exports to Europe, for instance, are essential for the economies of both, whatever proposals for alternative "green" sources the EU energy strategy entertains. This is a main source of Russia's economic and political strength. (Though, even here, the opportunities for converting these exports into an instrument of security policy are curtailed by the joint stance of the consumers led by Germany.)

Putin's dominance over Russian politics used to be based on redistributing the ever-expanding petro-revenues that resulted from this Russian strength among greedy stakeholders, while also ensuring some trickle-down. However, as energy prices fell and the economy tanked, he had to re-invent himself as a war leader. The triumphant Anschluss of Crimea accomplished this trick. But his sky-high popularity is fragile, requiring a massive propaganda campaign as well as new victories. Putin feels empowered by the wave of public support, but he cannot allow his artificially boosted approval ratings to start declining. He is the only decider and the only possessor of all state secrets. But managing a war, even a "hybrid" one, requires a team of able and loyal lieutenants. Putin knows uncomfortable truths about the Kremlin, rife with petty quarrels and ill-begotten fortunes, and knows there are limits to its trustworthiness. His supreme authority is, therefore, far more vulnerable than it appears. He is perfectly aware of the ugly end of quite a few fellow autocrats, who had looked so secure in their palaces, until they were not.   

Putin's Dilemma

Putin is caught in a classic trap: Russia's military advantage is fading and certain to decrease further. He needs to exploit that advantage sooner rather later. Putin likely views the pause in the Ukraine conflict as a losing proposition, and the big guns that have resumed cannonade recently in the suburbs of Donetsk very probably spell the end of the Minsk ceasefire. Russia, having boldly skipped the phase of melancholic stagnation (zastoi), is now witnessing a rapid deterioration. Its leaders are in desperate need of a new victory to sustain public support. One thing Sergey Aleksashenko has right is that the West cannot accept the status-quo in war-torn Ukraine, cannot expect the current pause to last-and should work on non-traditional responses to Putin's aggressive revisionism.

But such responses are more than U.S. State Secretary John Kerry was apparently able to muster during his four-hour meeting with Putin in Sochi last month. The length of that monologue (Kerry hardly had anything to say) is a good measure of Putin's anxiety. He needs to make a decision on Ukraine before the logic of Russian weakness asserts itself. In the end, Putin is not a natural crisis manager or risk-taker and he can be deterred if the West asserts its strength.

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 #19
Sputnik
June 9, 2015
Now It's Official: Western Support is Essential for Regime Change

There are various way to overthrow a government or bring down an entire political system, Stratfor elaborates, adding that the support from the West tipped the balance in favor of anti-government groups.

There are various ways to bring down a government, according to Stratfor, a private US intelligence company, and the use of large-scale protests is just one such method; the success of a protest movement, however, is based on four pillars, and external support from "foreign governments" is one crucial factor.

"The success of protest movements often hinges on four key factors. The first is society's perception of the protest movement's grievances... The second important element is organizational capability... The third key factor is the strength of the government and its ability to rely on security forces to crack down on protesters... Finally, external support from foreign governments - whether direct support such as funding and training or indirect support such as encouragement - can strengthen protest movements," Stratfor's analysts underscored.

Analyzing the recent anti-government protests in the region, Stratfor's analysts highlighted the role of the EU and the US in the events. For instance, in 2014, the support from Western governments played a huge role in galvanizing both protesters and protest leaders in Kiev, Ukraine, the analysts pointed out.
"Western governments - including the United States and Germany - had long invested resources in supporting the development of civil society in Ukraine. Some protest leaders, such as Klitschko, had close ties to Berlin. Several civil society groups that became involved in the protests also had longstanding ties to Western nongovernmental organizations and government institutions," the Stratfor report stated.

Anti-government protests and a Western attempt to stage a coup in Macedonia will not succeed, as the majority of people are firmly behind current Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, a political expert specializing in Macedonian politics, told Sputnik.

Furthermore, during the protests Western politicians and officials openly condoned and encouraged the protesters. Some of them even visited Maidan Square, the analysts pointed out in apparent reference to US Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

The distinguishing feature of the Ukrainian protests was the "violent resistance" practiced by far-right groups, emphasized the analysts. Together with "the protest movement's strong grievances, superior organization, and external encouragement," it had ultimately led to the collapse of Yanukovich's government.

Western governments have also been greatly involved in "mediating" between the government and opposition parties in Macedonia in 2015.

The May protests in the region brought together Macedonia's opposition groups and political parties while the incident in Kumanovo on May 9 "undermined the government's credibility in the eyes of many Macedonians," according to the Stratfor report.

Curiously enough, Stratfor's analysts turned a blind eye to the fact that Albanian insurgents attacked the police in Kumanovo. Instead, the analysts insisted that Macedonia's authorities "cracked down" on "alleged ethnic Albanian militants."

They also remained silent about the alleged trigger point for the unrest - the unwillingness of Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to follow Western-backed sanctions against Russia.

The analysts claimed that Macedonia's protests eventually succeeded in bringing the Gruevski administration to the negotiation table.

"The main element that propelled change, however, was the involvement of outside governments. Direct mediation by Western officials, especially from the United States and the European Union, led to the negotiations for early elections," the analysts stressed.

In contrast, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government remains a tough nut to crack. The prime minister has been facing harsh criticism from the West for cooperation with Moscow. However, Viktor Orban persists in developing an independent policy.

According to the Stratfor report, the failure of Hungary's protest movement can be explained by the fact that the country's opposition is fragmented, while Orban's government has worked to consolidate its power during the last several years. Furthermore, "there has been no direct external effort to facilitate a change in government," emphasized Stratfor's analysts.

Highlighting the role of the EU and the US in large-scale protests in Central and Eastern Europe, the Stratfor report indicates that the recent protest movements have been used by the West to either oust undesirable governments or pressure them into following the Western political agenda. Moreover, the analysts do not focus on whether or not the ousted governments were democratically elected, and they present protests as a "legitimate" way for a regime change.

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 #20
Vestnik Kavkaza
http://vestnikkavkaza.net
June 9, 0215
How could relations between Russia and the West change?
By Vestnik Kavkaza

The G7 summit closed in Bavaria yesterday. As a result of it, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel stated that the G7 countries were ready to stiffen sanctions against Russia, if necessary. The same idea was expressed by President of the US Barack Obama. According to Western leaders, there is "an impassable barrier" in relations between Russia and the West. They mean the merger of Crimea with Russia. However, even the West understands that such global problems as the Syrian crisis and the Iranian nuclear problem cannot be solved without Russia.

However, the head of the department of international organizations and global political processes of the World Politics Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Andrei Sidorov, reminds that if we recall the very beginning of the current administration of Barack Obama, one of the main tasks of it was establishing relations with Russia and the construction of a new ''architecture'' in the region, which was considered as a point of attraction of the modern world.

According to him, "it is no coincidence that the EU signed an agreement on free trade with South Korea' in 2010. Now they are holding a number of negotiations with other countries, including Japan and even Vietnam." "In this sense, frankly speaking, I would stop speaking about Russian-European relations. There are Russian-Euro-Atlantic relations," the expert believes.

Speaking about the fact that Europe is losing its independence, Andrei Sidorov noted that Angela Merkel was interviewed before the G7 summit, and she repeated the same threats to the world that were listed by President Obama in September. "She named the threats in this sequence: Russia - Ebola - Islamic State. These were the three main threats. Moreover, it wasn't the United States that actively pushed Ukraine, offering to sign the association agreement, which ignited those tragic events that have been taking place in Ukraine," Sidorov points out.

The expert thinks that the next step is the matter of Transdniestria: "Russian troops are based in Transdniestria. In 2008 an attack on Russian peacekeepers led to clashes with Russian troops. It is important for the US to make an aggressor out of Russia. In 2014 they failed make Russia a threat to world peace, because the majority of the modern world countries continued relations with Russia. Moreover, we can see an improvement of these relations. But what if Russia will be forced to use its armed forces in Ukraine or in Transdniestria? In this case, even those countries which had a good attitude towards Russia will be forced to reconsider our relations. In this case, it will be possible to bring about a real isolation of Russia and make a real enemy of us. It will be the beginning of a Cold War, because there were two superpowers or blocs at the time of the Cold War."

Andrei Sidorov thinks that Vladimir Putin doesn't want to play this game: "A variety of steps may be taken in order to make us play according to their rules. It is likely there will be a worsening of the situation in the southeast, which can cause another conflict. It is about to happen. The blockade of Transdniestria is being tightened, and I remind you once again that Russian peacekeepers are in Transdniestria under the Russian flag."

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 #21
Izvestia
June 5, 2015
West launches new "propaganda campaign" against Russia - speaker
State Duma Chairman Sergey Naryshkin: "'Person's logic is that of his masters.' State Duma Chairman Sergey Naryshkin on latest spiral of anti-Russian hysteria in West"

It is perfectly obvious that in the last few days the West has launched a new information and propaganda campaign against Russia. Everything has been piled on: more lies about the alleged Russian connection in the Malaysian Boeing disaster, about the dispatch of our troops to southeastern Ukraine, about our "burning" desire to confront Europe, etc...

This time they are trying to frighten decent Europeans with Moscow with the aid of a series of "angry statements from the people," manufactured in an instant and released to order. And these statements come from little-known people, from the Baltic countries, for instance. From those who were silent when shameful sanctions were introduced against our scientists and cultural figures, those who supported the coup d'etat in Ukraine and have become unwanted guests in our country.

Nor has the United States scrupled to resort to the services of certain European members of parliament who over the last 18 months have contrived to completely undermine their own reputation. I have almost no doubt that they were stirred up by a telephone call from the US State Department, as frequently happened at the start of the sanctions epic, I myself have witnessed a drastic "change of face" in individual politicians when initially I received from them on paper absurd explanations for the cancellation of planned visits and later (and, of course, strictly "confidentially") information regarding the real reasons for what had happened.

I am sincerely sorry for these people, particularly against the background of the open and courageous stance by other colleagues of theirs who have continued all this time to come to the State Duma for talks. And even to Crimea, to see for themselves the extent to which what has been dinned into them from the other side of the world does not correspond to the truth. Even now they are not afraid of any baying from across the ocean.

That the present campaign to defame Russia, timed for the EU June summit where the topic of sanctions may again be raised, has again been made in USA [last three words in English] and has been orchestrated from there, is absolutely clear. As an example, take a look at a recent article by Thomas Graham, the US National Security Council's former chief "expert" on Russia. As it were absolving the Russian president of the now stale charge of being guilty of all sins, without the slightest trace of embarrassment he has simply transferred that charge to the entire Russian people. It turns out that we are hegemons, barbarians and imperialists all at the same time. He claims that as much as 200 years ago, following the Napoleonic wars, a split arose between Russia and the rest of Europe, which since then has been moving steadily towards "liberal democracy" (the apotheosis of which should clearly be seen as Nazi Germany). And we are allegedly wrong to assume that Ukraine's new "friends" are fighting not for its independence but to steal and seize a new zone of influence. And when we oppose the crude domination in Europe of a single power positioned on the other side of the Atlantic, we are doing it solely because we do not want all-European unity! That's Mr Graham's logic...

But never mind that!! A person's logic is that of his masters. The question lies elsewhere: what is the United States after this time? What kind of acts of provocation are they preparing next? I think their forays into the continent have not yet ended given that before the end of his term as president it is important for Obama to achieve the conclusion of an all-embracing trade and economic agreement with the European Union. And thus cut it off from economic relations with Russia, labelling our entire people as "uncivilized" (incidentally, in a collective article in Le Monde recently, a group of French political analysts called for the precise opposite, advocating the development of constructive relations with Russia).

That is why the State Department is, on the one hand, trying to drive rebellious European politicians back into its ideological "stable." And on the other hand it wants to continue military and economic expansion deep into the continent. It is for that purpose that the Americans now need a new "Russian threat," which will also help divert from them charges of impeding the "Normandy process" in Ukraine.

They are not embarrassed in the slightest that blood is being shed in the Donets Basin [Donbass] while the Ukrainian people are being plunged into poverty. After all, their emissaries are over there, and their national and even personal economic interests are there. And (so it seems to them) a bridgehead has already been created there for constant acts of armed provocation. Why otherwise would Mr Graham call for Ukraine to be turned into a state whose main role is to become "a barrier against Russian assaults on European unity?" That is, for him an entire European country is simply a barrier, and nothing more!

But a barrier is also a fence, is it not? And is it seemly for a "competent" European state to have "barriers" like prison railings and barbed wire?

Well, I can only be pleased for the American analysts that in their dreams about Ukraine's fine future they see such reliable and tested things. Those chief "democrats" are certainly the ones who know all about them.

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#22
Moscow Times
June 9, 2015
Future Is Bleak for U.S.-Russian Relationship
By Kevin Ryan
Retired Brigadier General Kevin Ryan is director of Defense and Intelligence Projects at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. He served as U.S. defense attache to Moscow from 2001 to 2003.

On June 5, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter met with U.S. diplomatic and military leaders in Stuttgart, Germany to review America's response to Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine. His review of strategy follows a May 12 meeting by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with President Vladimir Putin in Sochi. After this visit, is the U.S.-Russian relationship set to improve or get worse?

It's going to get worse. Bilateral relations are in free fall, and attempts to change that belie the gravitational forces taking it down. In the next decade, we will look back on the Obama-Putin spat as "the good old days."

Americans forget that in the 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was already railing against unipolar politics. During those years though, security elites in the U.S. and Russia still debated whether Russia could be integrated into the West.

For leaders in Moscow the debate ended in 1999 when the U.S. and NATO operated outside their borders to bomb Yugoslavia over Kosovo. For the American security establishment, it was the annexation of Crimea that provided its "Kosovo moment," which ended the debate in Washington over integration. Now both countries base their relationship on deterrence and not cooperation.

Today we have entered a period of brinksmanship in Eastern Europe. The United States deploys troops on a rotating basis in the Baltic states along Russia's border and has reintroduced American tanks into Europe.

Russia has increased ground forces along its side of the land border. The United States and NATO have added air patrols over the Baltic states and are proceeding with planned missile defenses in Europe. Russia has increased flights by nuclear "Bear" bombers along NATO boundaries and air defense fighters along its own border. In addition to all this, Russia continues to support the separatists in eastern Ukraine. Many NATO allies are increasing their defense spending. Sweden and Finland are openly contemplating NATO membership.

In a March 2015 meeting of the Elbe Group, which comprises former leaders of American and Russian intelligence and military organizations, senior retired Russian generals told their American counterparts that these kinds of steps by the U.S. and West are threats, which "Russia will not tolerate." Russia's new military doctrine, published in December 2014, backs them up by declaring that the buildup of NATO and its exercises in neighboring countries are threats to Russian security.

All of this might be reversible except that political trends in the two countries make it almost impossible. According to the Russian pollster the Levada Center, over 80 percent of Russians approve of what Putin is doing.

Confronted with a more active NATO and an awakened Russian nationalism, Putin or his successor may have to be even more nationalistic in the future.

How do politics in the United States compare? There is no one, from the political left or right, who champions a platform to improve relations with the Russians. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state attempted to "reset" relations with Russia in 2009, has since compared Putin to Hitler.

Even cooperation on issues like Iran cannot save the broader relationship. American politics will remain firmly anti-Russian through the next election and well into the new president's first term.

Going forward, American and Russian diplomats and military leaders must be careful in their words and actions to ensure that the fine line between deterrence and conflict is carefully and clearly maintained.

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 #23
Moscow Times
June 9, 2015
West Must Get Real, There's No 'New Cold War'
By Andrew Monaghan
Andrew Monaghan is a senior research fellow at Chatham House, and is author of "The New Politics of Russia - Interpreting Change."

The war in Ukraine suggests a new era of competition between the West and Russia. It has revealed fundamental differences in how post-Cold War European security is understood. The acrimonious statements by both sides illustrate the long-standing differences over how the Euro-Atlantic security architecture functions, and whether there is a need to redesign it.

It has also shown the limits of "strategic partnership." Hopes for strategic partnership between the West and Russia have ground to a halt as it has become clear that interests that are "common" are not "shared."

Both Russia and the West are anxious to counter international terrorism, for example, or prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But it is also clear that each side defines the causes, nature, location and scale of these interests differently - even the approaches are mutually contradictory, since one side blames the other for causing the problem or considers the other's proposals likely to exacerbate it.

At the same time, there is increasing friction over values. For a decade already it has been increasingly clear that the West and Russia are divided over their understanding of the nature of democracy, including over questions such as human rights and the role of the state in society.

For some years, this was described as a "values gap." But this no longer adequately describes the increasingly evident friction that has emerged between the more liberal Western approach of organizations such as the EU, and the more conservative approach espoused by Russia.

This sense of competition and friction, particularly strong since 2014 and the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, is often depicted as a "new Cold War" or a "return to the Cold War" - in effect, debate has focused around the idea of this competition as being a resumption of the bipolar era between the West and the Soviet Union.

In the Western discussion, Putin is portrayed as seeking to resurrect the Soviet Union or create some version of it - that his leadership is retrograde and taking Russia, and therefore European security, forward to the past.

This "new Cold War" debate is seductive, often presented with reference to the familiar stalwarts of Western thinking, Winston Churchill and George Kennan. But it is misleading and counterproductive. Importantly, it anchors Western thinking about Russia to an out-of-date and simplified, even mythical past. In it, Russia is rendered increasingly abstract.

The problems are threefold. First, the new Cold War debate reflects a persistent and repetitive polemic. Although it has emerged with particular prominence since 2014, it has been a feature of the Western discussion of Russia for a decade.

Since 2005, Western observers have asserted a "new Cold War" based on the direction in which Putin was seen to be taking Russia - away from democracy and partnership with the West. And today's discussion of Ukraine echoes almost exactly the commentaries of 2006, 2007 and 2008, with the energy crises, Putin's famous speech at the Munich Security Conference, Russia's resumption of strategic bomber flights and unilateral suspension of the CFE treaty and the Russia-Georgia war.

The "new Cold War" narrative was resurrected each time a crisis emerged, and each time it was rejected by those who argued that this was not a "new Cold War" since there were no fundamental clashes of interests, nor was there an ideological conflict.

This polemic is not just repetitive but increasingly automatic, unthinkingly deployed: Neither side takes account of the evolution and deterioration of the relationship between Russia and the West during the last decade, nor does it come to grips with the specific and substantive policy issues that underpin it.

Second, some suggest that lessons can be drawn from the Cold War era to help shape policies for the current situation. Yet exactly what is meant by a "new Cold War" remains vague, with little meaning beyond "the West and Russia have a troubled relationship." This allows great leeway for a confusing variety of interpretations, too indistinct and imprecise to allow any practical lessons to be drawn from it. As a result, stereotype and crude caricature infiltrate the argument in their place.

Indeed, the mainstream Western discussion of Russia suffers from a plethora of absurdly simplified and sensationalist analogies in which Russian actions are associated with but not compared to those of the Soviet Union and even Nazi Germany, and in which Putin is presented as the reincarnation of Stalin or Hitler, or some blend of the two.

History in this sense thus becomes myth or a sacred tale in which it is used to assert repetitive patterns from which lessons must be learnt, and the analogies illustrate that if lessons are not learned, then catastrophic consequences will follow.

But this is misleading. It is fertile ground for emotive political advocacy, but not learning practical lessons. It denies the uniqueness of events, discards chance, change, the role of individuals and freedom of action. Instead, it builds an abstract artifice that both distracts from real developments and frames policy options between a simplistic binary choice of (unpalatable) "appeasement" in diplomacy or the more forceful containment and deterrence.

Finally, the new Cold War idea is problematic because it anchors today's thinking to the 20th century, and creates a sense of apparent familiarity. This undercuts the need to adapt to current circumstances, and offers instead easy, "off-the-peg" solutions - effectively that the original readiness plans prepared for a confrontation with the Soviet Union 30 years ago are appropriate for today's challenges.

This is tantamount to preparing to fight the last war, never a good idea, and it does not allow either for the changing international environment or for Russian adaptability.

It is time to think about Russia in fresh, 21st-century terms. This means retiring old metaphors and allowing Churchill and Kennan to rest in peace. To be sure, the relationship is difficult. The friction of interests and values that has emerged between the Western model and the quite different Russian model is serious.

Russia, the West and the international situation more broadly is at a time of flux and competition. Western rules and the Euro-Atlantic architecture will be challenged. But this is not a "new Cold War," it is a "clash of Europes."

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 #24
Dances With Bears
http://johnhelmer.net
June 8, 2015
MAMELUKES TAKE CHATHAM HOUSE TO FIGHT RUSSIA WAR-SIR RODERIC LYNE'S LINE ENDS INDEPENDENCE
By John Helmer, Moscow
[Photos, links, and footnotes here http://johnhelmer.net/?p=13557]

In the history of warfare there is nothing new in the engagement of mercenaries to do the fighting and run the risks. The mamelukes (mamluks) were the most successful at the game - they started as slaves, became a warfighting caste, and ended as the rulers of the countries they captured, including Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517, and Iraq from 1704 to 1831. They defeated the European Crusaders. From then on, the term mameluke, when applied to someone in Europe, meant slavish obedience - the antithesis of independence. Napoleon employed a corps of them, and his long-serving bodyguard was one.

Sir Roderic Lyne (lead image, 3rd from left) is the number-2 executive in charge of the Royal Institute for International affairs (RIIA), known by its residence in London as Chatham House. Insiders say Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia, has captured the organization, and turned it into a warfighting unit against Russia, though, the sources say, not without a fight. Amongst the organization's members and financiers, opponents of the Lyne line against Russia accuse him of suppressing independence, and by promoting war against Russia of violating the Chatham House charter.

The organization was the brainchild of British and American veterans of World War I, mostly senior diplomats and soldiers. At the start in 1919-20, the idea was an "Anglo-American Institute of foreign affairs to study international problems with a view to preventing future wars." In the outcome, the British established an institute of their own, and the Americans did likewise [1]. Chatham House, on St. James's Square in London, was a gift from a Canadian mining mogul. As a think-tank today, it claims [2] reputation among peers as "the No. 1 think tank outside the US for seven consecutive years and No. 2 worldwide for the past four years."

The Charter, adopted in 1926 and amended several times through 2013, says [3] at Article 6: "The Institute as such shall not express an opinion on any aspect of international affairs". Art. 4( c) sets out the purpose "generally to encourage and facilitate the study of international information knowledge questions and to promote the exchange of information and thought on international affairs and the understanding of the circumstances, conditions and views of nations and peoples."

Liquidating people and their views doesn't quite meet the exchange criterion. But such outcomes can be purchased in secret from the organization, according to Art 5(d). This permits the receipt of money "subject or not subject to any special trusts or conditions." The sub-section (f) also allows "to make and carry out any arrangement for joint working or co-operation with any other Society or Body whether incorporated or not carrying on work similar to any work for the time being carried on by the Institute." Read: research and intelligence analysis for warfighting organizations belonging to governments, secret services, their proprietaries and fronts.

This is proving to be more lucrative than ever before. According to its annual report for 2013- 2014, Chatham House's income shot up by almost 30% over the previous year - from £9.9 million to £12.8 million.

Compared to the year 2000, when revenue from selling research came to £1.2 million, the growth rate is 525%. There is now so much cash, Chatham House can't spend it fast enough - a million-pound surplus was the result last year, and a 50% jump in the amount of money earned on investing it.

The Chatham House's governing body, called the Council, is elected into office by the members voting at the Annual General Meeting. But members are appointed by the organization itself; both voters and Council candidates are regulated with "absolute discretion" of the apparatchiki. Byelaw 66 indemnifies Lyne and his other Council members "against all costs and losses for which he may become liable by reason of any act in the discharge of his duty." Byelaw 54 defines the duty to "ensure the intellectual quality of the Institute, promote the Institute's independence, and enhance its reputation" as belonging to the Council's appointee as director. At the moment, that's Robin Niblett (below). Lyne is off the independence hook, but he's covered in case Russia warfighting triggers liabilities.

The annual report doesn't give a count of member voters, but concedes that member subscriptions are growing so slowly, the count is unlikely to be growing at all. There are 62 corporate members classified as major on account of the price of their admission ticket; they include the British Army, the US Embassy in London; and Amsterdam & Partners, a publicist for Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Lesser paying corporate members include the Polish Institute for Democracy and the Quakers in Britain. Embassies, NGOs, and universities make another 73, plus an uncounted number of individual subscribers. Not counting Khodorkovsky, and the Embassy in London, there is no Russian institution, bank, corporation or individual on the member list.

Last week Lyne led five co-authors in the release by Chatham House of their blueprint for warfare against Russia. Called "The Russian Challenge", it has been analysed here [6]. The Russian business ties of two of the co-authors, Lyne and Sir Andrew Wood, have been extensive, and continuing. Lyne's promotion of the London-listed Russian goldminer Petropavlovsk plc, was analysed in Friday's report. He is vocally in favour of tough Russian sanctions; he exempts himself.

In his Chatham House profile [7] Wood is coy about identifying his paymasters, referring to "positions with a number of UK-based companies with Russian interests as well as others active in other former Soviet countries."

Independent press reports identify Wood's business as including the US advertising group PBN, Ernst & Young, and Renaissance Capital, after it was taken over by Mikhail Prokhorov. When he was chairman of PBN's board of directors [8], Wood appears to have given his seal of approval for PBN contracts with Oleg Deripaska's asset holding Basic Element; Victor Rashnikov's Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK), as well as Gazprom, Lukoil, Sberbank, the Moscow-listed pharmacy Chain 36.6, and Renaissance Capital. During Wood's time at PBN, he reported to control shareholder, the WPP conglomerate supervised by Philip Lader (right), a former US Ambassador to the UK. Lader was also on Deripaska's payroll.

Summing up the lessons he had earned, Wood wrote - and Chatham House published [9] in May 2011 - a briefing paper entitled "Russian business diplomacy". "Western business experience beyond the 'strategic' sectors has been mixed," he conceded, "but with the right local political and economic connections there is money to be made." Wood was advertising himself. "Western figures have been recruited to the boards of directors of Russian companies and Western experts have been employed too... The greater the distance between the Russian state and the enterprise in question, the more effective Western participation has proved. But it is hard to sit on a board, let alone work for a company, and be too outspoken."

At the end of "The Russian Challenge" report, there is the house motto, "Independent thinking since 1920." At the front, in the small print below the charity registration number and the copyright notice, the charter requirement is set out out: "Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are the responsibility of the authors."

Member sources say this is not quite what happened in the run-up to the publication of Lyne's line. Andrew Monaghan (right), a senior research fellow at the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, drafted a 14-page paper he called "A 'New Cold War'? Abusing History, Misunderstanding Russia." It too carries the charter disclaimer: "Chatham House is an independent body that promotes the rigorous study of international questions and does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are the responsibility of the author(s)." But in Monaghan's case, he proved to be much too independent in his views for Lyne to address when "The Russian Challenge" was compiled. On the organization website Monaghan's paper is described as a "research paper". Lyne's report, however, is tagged a "Chatham House Report". No free asparagus roll at a Chatham House event for figuring out which opinion is expressly endorsed by the organization, according to member sources.

Read Monaghan's piece in full here [10].[http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_document/20150522ColdWarRussiaMonaghan.pdf] He received [11] his academic training in Russian studies at UK universities and then did research at the NATO Defence College in Rome for five years. He is now the senior research fellow on Russia at Chatham House, with additional academic appointments at Oxford University.

The Lyne line marshalled three key terms for its declaration of war - truth (that's Chatham House); falsehood (that's Russia); and propaganda (everything running from the latter toward the former). The three terms do not appear in Monaghan's paper. Instead, he provides a compendium of Russia mistakes by everyone he could find from ex-Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski (below, left) , Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper (centre), and two Chatham House sources - an Australian Russia-hater called Bobo Lo (right), and a Chatham House report of last year to the NATO Secretary-General.

Monaghan's conclusion: "The discussion about today's Russia therefore suffers from a repetitive plethora of absurdly simplified explanatory images in which Russian actions are associated with, though rarely rigorously compared to, those of the Soviet Union and/or Nazi Germany; and in which Vladimir Putin appears as the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler or some blend of the two."

Monaghan accepts that we are at "proxy war" in the Ukraine. He doesn't endorse the accession of Crimea. He is cautious in recommending war-fighting because - he warns - Chatham House needs to go back to school first. "It's worth asking what signals might be received in Moscow as a result of the references to appeasement and Hitler. The analogy, if pursued to its full conclusion, suggests that Europe should wage what is inevitable war on Russia, defeating and enforcing unconditional surrender on it, including a complete regime change...Policy-makers' grasp of the Russian leadership's motivations and decision-making processes, especially in respect of specifically military matters, has been degraded. So too, as a result, has the West's ability to pursue effective policies of deterrence, since it remains unclear what actually deters the Russian leadership."

It's clear, say insiders, that Monaghan's assessment has not been promoted as the Chatham House view. According to sources claiming to know, Monaghan's report had run into internal opposition and been "excluded" from the Lyne report. While the publication of the two reports is close in time, that is coincidental, other sources say: the work started out separately, and was intended to stay that way. Asked to clarify the circumstances, Monaghan says: "My project was begun last year, and evolved this year. It has been fully peer-reviewed. There's been no effort to prevent it from being published. It is completely separate."

A well-known Chatham House member acknowledges something more than tolerance for Monaghan's criticism is at stake. "CH has taken a very hawkish line on Russia before, but especially since the Ukraine conflict started. I have been quite outspoken in questioning whether this is the role of an academic institution."

Francis Grove-White is the official spokesman for Chatham House. He was asked whether the organization's leadership, including Lyne, consider the publication and promotion of "The Russian Challenge", and its particular treatment of the concepts of truth, falsity, and propaganda, as a violation of Articles 4( c) and 6 of the organization's Charter. "This is not a question for me", he replied, referring to James Nixey (lead image, 2nd from left), head of the Russian programme. By publication time, neither Grove-White, nor Lyne, nor Nixey had responded to the question.

One of the corporate financiers commented: "it's well and good if Chatham House publishes views with which I, or others disagree. Nor is there an obvious problem of conflict of interest on the part of authors, subscribers, and research sponsors. The issue with independence is that there is now no attempt to provide an exchange or balance of views. Balance is the key. On Russia it's gone."

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 #25
Consortiumnews.com
June 8, 2015
Cold War II to McCarthyism II
June 8, 2015
By Robert Parry
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
Exclusive: With Cold War II in full swing, the New York Times is dusting off what might be called McCarthyism II, the suggestion that anyone who doesn't get in line with U.S. propaganda must be working for Moscow, reports Robert Parry.

Perhaps it's no surprise that the U.S. government's plunge into Cold War II would bring back the one-sided propaganda themes that dominated Cold War I, but it's still unsettling to see how quickly the major U.S. news media has returned to the old ways, especially the New York Times, which has emerged as Official Washington's propaganda vehicle of choice.

What has been most striking in the behavior of the Times and most other U.S. mainstream media outlets is their utter lack of self-awareness, for instance, accusing Russia of engaging in propaganda and alliance-building that are a pale shadow of what the U.S. government routinely does. Yet, the Times and the rest of the MSM act as if these actions are unique to Moscow.

A case in point is Monday's front-page story in the Times entitled "Russia Wields Aid and Ideology Against West to Fight Sanctions," which warns: "Moscow has brought to bear different kinds of weapons, according to American and European officials: money, ideology and disinformation."

The article by Peter Baker and Steven Erlanger portrays the U.S. government as largely defenseless in the face of this unprincipled Russian onslaught: "Even as the Obama administration and its European allies try to counter Russia's military intervention across its border, they have found themselves struggling at home against what they see as a concerted drive by Moscow to leverage its economic power, finance European political parties and movements, and spread alternative accounts of the conflict." [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/world/europe/russia-fights-wests-ukraine-sanctions-with-aid-and-ideology.html?ref=world&_r=1]

Like many of the Times' recent articles, this one relies on one-sided accusations from U.S. and European officials and is short on both hard evidence of actual Russian payments - and a response from the Russian government to the charges. At the end of the long story, the writers do include one comment from Brookings Institution scholar, Fiona Hill, a former U.S. national intelligence officer on Russia, noting the shortage of proof.

"The question is how much hard evidence does anyone have?" she asked. But that's about all a Times' reader will get if he or she is looking for some balanced reporting.

Missing the Obvious

Still, the more remarkable aspect of the article is how it ignores the much more substantial evidence of the U.S. government and its allies themselves financing propaganda operations and supporting "non-governmental organizations" that promote the favored U.S. policies in countries around the world.

Plus, there's the failure to recognize that many of Official Washington's own accounts of global problems have been riddled with propaganda and outright disinformation.

For instance, much of the State Department's account of the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin attack in Syria turned out to be false or misleading. United Nations inspectors discovered only one rocket carrying sarin - not the barrage that U.S. officials had originally alleged - and the rocket had a much shorter range than the U.S. government (and the New York Times) claimed. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Backs Off Its Syria-Sarin Analysis."]

Then, after the Feb. 22, 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, the U.S. government and the Times became veritable founts of propaganda and disinformation. Beyond refusing to acknowledge the key role played by neo-Nazi and other right-wing militias in the coup and subsequent violence, the State Department disseminated information to the Times that later was acknowledged to be false.

In April 2014, the Times published a lead story based on photographs of purported Russian soldiers in Ukraine but had to retract it two days later because it turned out that the State Department had misrepresented where a key photo was  taken, destroying the premise of the article. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Retracts Ukraine Photo Scoop."]

And sometimes the propaganda came directly from senior U.S. government officials. For instance, on April 29, 2014, Richard Stengel, under secretary of state for public diplomacy, issued a "Dipnote" that leveled accusations that the Russian network RT was painting "a dangerous and false picture of Ukraine's legitimate government," i.e., the post-coup regime that took power after elected President Viktor Yanukovych was driven from office. In this context, Stengel denounced RT as "a distortion machine, not a news organization."

Though he offered no specific dates and times for the offending RT programs, Stengel did complain about "the unquestioning repetition of the ludicrous assertion ... that the United States has invested $5 billion in regime change in Ukraine. These are not facts, and they are not opinions. They are false claims, and when propaganda poses as news it creates real dangers and gives a green light to violence."

However, RT's "ludicrous assertion" about the U.S. investing $5 billion was a clear reference to a public speech by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, in which she told them that "we have invested more than $5 billion" in what was needed for Ukraine to achieve its "European aspirations." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Who's the Propagandist: US or RT?"]

One could go on and on about the U.S. government making false or misleading claims about these and other international crises. But it should be clear that Official Washington doesn't have clean hands when it comes to propaganda mud-slinging, though you wouldn't know that from the Times' article on Monday.

Funding Cut-outs

And, beyond the U.S. government's direct dissemination of disinformation, the U.S. government also has spread around hundreds of millions of dollars to finance "journalism" organizations, political activists and "non-governmental organizations" that promote U.S. policy goals inside targeted countries. Before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup in Ukraine, there were scores of such operations in the country financed by the National Endowment for Democracy. NED's budget from Congress exceeds $100 million a year.

But NED, which has been run by neocon Carl Gershman since its founding in 1983, is only part of the picture. You have many other propaganda fronts operating under the umbrella of the U.S. State Department and its U.S. Agency for International Development. Last May 1, USAID issued a fact sheet summarizing its work financing friendly journalists around the world, including "journalism education, media business development, capacity building for supportive institutions, and strengthening legal-regulatory environments for free media."

USAID estimated its budget for "media strengthening programs in over 30 countries" at $40 million annually, including aiding "independent media organizations and bloggers in over a dozen countries," In Ukraine before the coup, USAID offered training in "mobile phone and website security."

USAID, working with billionaire George Soros's Open Society, also funds the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which engages in "investigative journalism" that usually goes after governments that have fallen into disfavor with the United States and then are singled out for accusations of corruption. The USAID-funded OCCRP also collaborates with Bellingcat, an online investigative website founded by blogger Eliot Higgins.

Higgins has spread misinformation on the Internet, including discredited claims implicating the Syrian government in the sarin attack in 2013 and directing an Australian TV news crew to what appeared to be the wrong location for a video of a BUK anti-aircraft battery as it supposedly made its getaway to Russia after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014.

Despite his dubious record of accuracy, Higgins has gained mainstream acclaim, in part, because his "findings" always match up with the propaganda theme that the U.S. government and its Western allies are peddling. Though most genuinely independent bloggers are ignored by the mainstream media, Higgins has found his work touted.

In other words, whatever Russia is doing to promote its side of the story in Europe and elsewhere is more than matched by the U.S. government through its direct and indirect agents of influence. Indeed, during the original Cold War, the CIA and the old U.S. Information Agency refined the art of "information warfare," including pioneering some of its current features like having ostensibly "independent" entities and cut-outs present the propaganda to a cynical public that rejects much of what it hears from government but may trust "citizen journalists" and "bloggers."

To top off this modern propaganda structure, we now have the paper-of-record New York Times coming along to suggest that anyone who isn't disseminating U.S. propaganda must be in Moscow's pocket. The implication is that now that we have Cold War II, we can expect to have McCarthyism II as well.

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 #26
http://readrussia.com
June 4, 2015
Kremlin Whores, Kremlin Whores Everywhere!
By Jim Kovpak
James Kovpak is a journalist and amateur historian based in Moscow. He is the founder of the blog, Russia without BS. You can follow him on twitter at @RussiawithoutBS

As the world learns more about Russia's "information warfare" almost every day, there is a growing trend of paranoid laymen accusing reputable journalists of being paid Kremlin shills.

The past year has seen a marked rise in interest regarding Russia's so-called "information war" and the Kremlin's supposedly vast propaganda machine. As is so often the case with Russian topics, audiences sitting in the cheap seats tend to take concepts like those of Kremlin troll armies or paid bloggers and run them straight out of the stadium. Those of us who report on and write about Russia are used to being labeled shills or agents of Moscow or Washington, it comes with the territory. My rule of thumb is that if you aren't being accused of simultaneously working for the CIA and the FSB, you're probably doing something wrong. That being said, when I start seeing people like Mark Galeotti being labeled as a "Kremlin Whore," I think it's time to sit down and have a little chat before this hysteria gets out of hand.

Heuristics

Usually the reason why people are constantly being accused of shilling is because Russian politics are incredibly polarizing, a fact that was well-known long before the crisis in Ukraine. For a variety of reasons, audiences tend to join one of two camps, one generally corresponding to "the West" and the other being that of Vladimir Putin. This means that online discourse about Russia tends to resemble the wars between partisans of different video game consoles in terms of fanaticism and brand loyalty. Concession on certain matters or even subtle nuance is taken for disloyalty if not sinister 'concern trolling,' i.e. an attempt to undermine the camp's position seemingly from within.

Of course if this behavior were only limited to mindless fanatics, it could be dismissed as a minor negative side of the job. Unfortunately even savvier, critically thinking readers and writers can mistake a particular article for EU propaganda or Putin apologetics if they don't have all the facts. This is due to what I call the heuristics of Russian politics. These are little rules of thumb which we instinctively go by to determine the angle or potential bias of a Russia pundit. Much like the heuristics we use in our everyday lives, they can often lead us astray.

A writer vehemently criticizing Ukraine's recent "decommunization" laws and the glorification of organizations like Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) or figures like Stepan Bandera isn't necessarily an agent of the Kremlin who gets his info from Russian state media. Many such figures are academics who support the territorial integrity of Ukraine and who defended the Maidan movement from attempts to portray it as a monolithic far-right coup. By the same token, people who defend Maidan as a movement and support Ukraine's national struggle are not necessarily "neocons" or lovers of Ukraine's noticeable far-right. Many of these people are extremely critical of the new Ukrainian government and are very opposed to the nationalists. Of course these facts might not be evident from one article, which is why it's a good idea to read a representative sample of an author's work before trying to affix a label.

Unfortunately many people started taking an interest in Russia and Ukraine only in 2014, and as such they have found themselves bombarded with questionable Russian-funded sources, stories about Kremlin trolls, and articles alleging secret hidden motives behind all kinds of political movements and events. How does one tell the real shills from serious analysts? Where do we draw the line between disagreeing and concern trolling? How does the new reader avoid getting sucked into a camp and leaving their critical thinking at the gate? For the sake of these newcomers I decided to share a few helpful secrets that will help to distinguish sincere analysts from the cheerleaders. Those who are seriously interested in finding objective analysis on Russian issues should take note.

Real Kremlin supporters don't hide it

When I see someone lobbing the Kremlin shill label at a well-known journalist, sometimes someone I either know personally or whom I've at least met or corresponded with, it's usually a sign that the accuser is an amateur when it comes to the politics of Russian journalism. The thing about Kremlin supporters is that they are almost never subtle. Occasionally you see some blogger or writer pretending to be some kind of moderate, or more often than not you catch a writer changing their arguments to appeal to the left and right, but personally I can spot these people in the first paragraph, if not their lead or even their headline.

Without debating the moral aspects of becoming a Kremlin propagandist, I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they actually believe what they say they believe in. That means that if for whatever reason they decide to support Putin's Russia, they see this as a positive thing and have little incentive to hide it. Check out the front page of Sputnik News or, if you need a laugh, Russia Insider, and tell me if you see anything remotely subtle about their slant.  

So to wrap this topic up - How do you know if someone supports the Kremlin? They'll tell you.

Unicorns, fairies, and the subtle Kremlin propagandist

As I wrote in the beginning of this article, learning that Mark Galeotti had been labeled a "Kremlin whore" was the catalyst for me to write this. In fact it was really more of a last straw. In recent times I've detected a number of very similar individuals leaving comments around the internet, wherein they implicate a long list of well known journalists who are supposedly liars, hacks, and propagandists all in the pay of the Kremlin. I'm not going to name drop, but almost every time the list consists of people whom I consider friends, have met personally, or correspond with. The idea that they are "disinformation agents" is simply laughable. Still I have seen someone label them "subtle propagandists," or words to that effect.

The accusations are typically vague, but generally they're accused of lying for Putin. There are only two specific accusations I've seen from these people to date. The first is that the journalists in question are lying for Putin because they refer to "rebels" or "local militias" in the Donbas separatist-controlled areas. One such individual I encountered insisted that they are all Russian forces and should be labeled such, implying that anyone who didn't do so was parroting the Kremlin line. Of course anyone who actually bothers to follow this war knows that the list of organizations and institutions which acknowledge the existence of a local separatist movement includes both the American and Ukrainian governments. In fact, the very term "Anti-Terrorist Operation," invented by the Ukrainian government, clearly implies that they acknowledge a local component of this movement. None of this negates the fact that this uprising was orchestrated by outside forces from Moscow, or that Russian regular army forces and Russian volunteers are obviously and indisputably involved. The problem is that a journalist can't just go around Donetsk claiming that every armed person he sees is a Russian soldier even if NATO governments or the Ukrainian governments don't do so. If that makes them a Kremlin whore well, I guess the U.S. State Department and the Ukrainian government are also Kremlin whores. Or Kremlin brothels. Actually I don't know what you're supposed to call an institution of Kremlin whores. I'll have to get back to you about that.

The other, possibly more ridiculous accusation I've seen is that these "subtle propagandists" are trying to elicit sympathy for Russia by writing about human suffering in that country or in the Donbas. If you write about people in Donetsk whose houses have been destroyed by artillery, you're obviously a Kremlin propagandist. Never mind if you also write about people disappearing in the separatist-held areas, or if you've written about refugees who fled to the Ukrainian-held side. Humanizing people who may have had no part in the war is propaganda.

At first glance this subtle propagandist idea might sound plausible. The Kremlin's information warfare organs are diverse and do attempt to appeal to a broad variety of audiences of differing intellectual capacity. Fort Russ and Russia Insider are the low-brow venues for the edgy 20-something conspiracy theorists. Various online "Eurasia" journals pose as high brow material. RT is somewhere in between. But according to these intrepid internet detectives, the most dastardly Kremlin operatives are these subtle propagandists. What exactly is their methodology?

Based on what I've read from those who advance this idea of the subtle propagandist, their methods work something like this:

- Write numerous articles about corruption and social problems in Russia. Show how these problems are rooted in the system, which incidentally has come under increasing control of Putin.

- Write about people being harassed by the government for expressing opposition to its policies or supporting opposition politicians, i.e. people who are opposed to Putin's system.

- Write numerous articles debunking claims of the Kremlin or challenging its version of events.

- In between dozens of articles in line with the above, occasionally slip in a human interest article about the travails of people who were bombed out of their houses in Donetsk or about poor disabled orphans in Russia who can't get proper medical care or schooling.

From this analysis of the subtle propagandist's methods, it's obvious that the last point is the killing blow. As soon as readers see an article along those lines, they will ignore everything else they read in dozens of articles by the same author and embrace the Kremlin's line. You can just see people reading their news on their tablet over breakfast, and falling hook, line, and sinker for this sinister tactic:

"You know honey, this author has taught me a lot about how corrupt and incompetent Putin's regime is, but today they wrote something about how disabled children in Russian orphanages live in appalling conditions without personally implicating Putin as the culprit. Thanks to this I now realize that in fact he's not responsible for anything negative that has happened in Russia for the past 15 years, and in fact I'm starting to believe he is really a great statesman who is leading his nation to glory at the head of the BRICS alternative to the US/Anglo-Atlantic hegemony! Let us as a family recognize the Russian annexation of the Crimea!"

You know what, I can't see that. As it turns out, the idea of the "subtle" Kremlin propagandist, like most conspiracy theories, totally unravels as soon as you talk it out. If you don't think so, try to imagine the shoe on the other foot - a hypothetical RT reporter who writes article after article supporting the Kremlin line, only to occasionally pull back on certain issues and admit that perhaps "the West" has a point or maybe we should take pity on Ukraine. Is anyone actually delusional enough to believe that this "subtle" technique would reliably drive RT fans into the camp of Applebaum and Lucas? Sadly, the answer seems to be yes. For the rest of you out there, rest assured that the "subtle Kremlin propagandist" is as real as a unicorn or fairy.

A working rule of thumb

It is highly unlikely that the binary-thinking that so plagues discourse on Russia will disappear any time soon. Bearing this in mind, it might be useful to develop better, more reliable rules of thumb for judging the work of pundits. Sometimes this just means reading enough of a writer's work before applying a label or alleging bias. Other times it means making the assumption that the author sincerely believes what they are writing, rather than simply working for a paycheck. Perhaps hardest of all is to examine one's own biases, and understanding that an author's difference of opinion on one or two points doesn't necessarily make them a Washington consensus peddling "neocon" or a Kremlin whore. If you demand that all news about Russia must satisfy every point of your preferred narrative, you're part of the problem.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go spend some of my shill bucks.

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 #27
Harpers Magazine
wwww.harpers.org
May 22, 2015
Part of the Problem
Jonathan Chait's flawed attack on David Bromwich's critique of Barack Obama's presidency
By Christopher Beha

This month's issue of Harper's Magazine features David Bromwich's extended assessment of Barack Obama's presidential tenure. Bromwich voted twice for Obama and acknowledges that "his predecessor was worse, and his successor most likely will also be worse." Yet he has been one of the president's most persistent and articulate critics from the left. In this lengthy piece, Bromwich considers Obama's shortcomings on many fronts-among them his failure to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, his extension of the surveillance state, his decision to fill his economic team with Wall Street-friendly Clintonites-and finds that they are tied together by a single theme: Obama's tendency, when politics get "tough," to follow the "path of least resistance." (The words are the president's own.)

One symptom of this tendency, in Bromwich's view, has been Obama's inability to outflank elements within the State Department whose foreign policy goals are contradictory to Obama's own. For example, Obama consistently spoke of de-escalation with Russia while assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland boasted privately and publicly of the State Department's efforts to support pro-Western elements within Ukraine, efforts which Bromwich believes included a policy of defamation against Vladimir Putin. "When Nuland appeared in Kiev to hand out cookies to the anti-Russian protesters," Bromwich writes, "it was as if a Russian operative had arrived to cheer a mass of anti-American protesters in Baja California." Such behavior is tough to understand, given Obama's stated desire to improve relations with Putin. "It almost looks," Bromwich concludes, "as if a cell of the State Department assumed the management of Ukraine policy and the president was helpless to alter their design." Bromwich is hardly the first person to suggest the existence of a "deep state" that works independently of the rest of the administration-in fact, his piece cites half a dozen reporters whose work he's relied on here-but the idea of "cells" within the U.S. government working against the president's stated goals will certainly be difficult for some to credit, and Bromwich is careful to present these arguments as speculative. In any case, they are a small part of an extended critique of the administration, and they can only be understood within the context of a much larger consideration of Obama's political weaknesses.

This issue had been in subscribers' mailboxes for a matter of hours when New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait posted his response to Bromwich's essay. This much is hardly surprising: Chait has made himself the go-to "reasonable centrist" for swatting down the left's criticisms of Obama. What was surprising was the particular angle Chait took for his attack. In a post titled "Obama Is Defaming Putin, Complains Harper's Cover Story," Chait focuses on Bromwich's comparison of Kiev to Baja California:

"Right, it's exactly as if Russian operatives had come to greet anti-American protesters in California. Except there aren't anti-American protesters in California, largely because California is part of the United States of America. Kiev, on the other hand, is not part of Russia."

It didn't take long for someone-presumably a reader, not an editor or fact-checker at New York-to point out that California and Baja California are not, in fact, the same place, and that the latter is part of Mexico. Chait appended an "update" (not a "correction"), in which he acknowledged the "hasty error" of "skip[ping] over" the word "Baja"-but rather oddly insisted that his "point stands."

Anyone with basic geographical knowledge could see Chait's error here, but it would take someone who'd actually read Bromwich's essay to recognize the deeper error, which was characterizing Bromwich's point as one about "Obama's minions" working to defame Putin. This gets the argument exactly wrong, since Bromwich was speculating about elements within the State Department working against Obama's intentions.

With the help of Chait's obvious but superficial error, it's possible to see how this less obvious but more profound error was made. Let me engage in a bit of speculation myself here: Chait seems to have decided before reading Bromwich's piece that he wanted to write a dismissive post about the latest anti-Obama screed from the left. He skimmed Bromwich's 10,000 words-the product of months of writing and years of thought-for what seemed like the easiest "gotcha" moment, and spent a few minutes on a snarky takedown post.

Chait's initial post included at least one other error: he wrote that Bromwich's piece was not available online, because "Harper's hates the internet." Of course, Bromwich's piece is available to subscribers online, along with every issue of Harper's Magazine dating back to 1850. Nor is it exactly true that we hate the Internet. But it is true that we hate the kind of Internet-enabled fatuous political point scoring exemplified by Chait's post.

This is what brings me to my real aim in writing about Chait here, which is not (or not just) schadenfreude at the sight of a critic being hoisted on the petard of his own lazy bad faith. Chait got a lot of attention recently for an essay about the resurgence of political correctness, which he argued is "a system of left-wing ideological repression [that is] antithetical to liberalism." Above all, Chait concluded, the new political correctness was ineffective, because "bludgeoning" those who disagree with you into "despondent silence" is not, in the long run, the way to win political debates. I was largely in agreement with Chait there, and it is as one who agrees with him on that point that I'd like to speak directly to Chait now.

I'd like to ask you to consider seriously the possibility that dismissive "quick takes" like the one you executed yesterday are themselves a form of center-left ideological repression, that they amount precisely to an effort to bludgeon those who disagree with you into despondent silence rather than engaging with their ideas. I'd like to ask you to read David Bromwich's piece-the whole thing. Take hours with it, not minutes, and try not to skip over any words in your haste. Doubtless you will find much you disagree with. I'd like you to ask yourself whether, given the obvious laziness with which you perpetrated yesterday's hit job, you owe it to Bromwich or to your own readers to take the time to articulate those objections rather than finding what you think to be the single weakest point and dismissing it with a few paragraphs of snark. If you don't feel that you owe this effort to anyone, I'd like you to consider the possibility that, when it comes to the lobotomizing of American political discourse by forces of empty-headed repression, you, Jonathan Chait, are part of the problem.

 [return to Contents] 

 #28
www.openedemocracy.net
June 5, 2015
Ukraine's labour reforms threaten workers' rights
he oligarchs have joined forces to railroad a new labour code that strips Ukrainian workers of their already modest rights.
By Vitaly Dudin
Vitaly Dudin is a legal analyst at Ukraine's Center for Social and Labor Research, which was created in 2013 as an independent not-for-profit institution dedicated to the analysis of socio-economic problems, collective protests, labour relations and conflicts.

Neoliberal modernisation in Ukraine is nothing new. The processes and forces pushing it forward long predate the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych last February. But since the events of 2014, this process has been expedited and has arrived at a key issue: the laws governing the way people work.

To that end, employers are currently lobbying Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, to pass a new labour code, relying for support within the ruling coalition (via representatives of the Poroshenko Bloc and Arseny Yatsenyuk's People's Front), as well as the Opposition Bloc, a political party representing Yanukovych's former allies. The exploitation of workers, it seems, is an issue where the interests of the Ukrainian elite trump all other political and personal differences.

Soviet hangovers

Ukraine's current labour code dates back to 1971. Despite its Marxist-Leninist origins, nearly 80% of this code has been amended and adapted for market conditions, and this is not the first time Ukrainian legislators have tried to overhaul it.

Employers stubbornly complain that the current code is not flexible enough and regularly hark back to its roots by denouncing it as 'socialist.' But even in the late Soviet era, it would have been difficult to call this code 'socialist': the 1971 code removed many benefits originally enshrined in the 1922 original.

Nevertheless, the code still contains principles inherited from the 1917 October Revolution. The issue here is that Ukraine lacks an independent trades union movement that could actually protect these rights. Since the beginning of the 2000s, employers have been trying to pass new labour laws, which would allow them to save money on 'human relations' and simplify their struggle with rebellious workers in Ukraine's dire economic crisis.

That said, most Ukrainian workers are satisfied with the labour code. But they are concerned only with how it is applied in practice by employers. Meanwhile, most independent trades unions (including the Confederation of Free Trades Unions) fundamentally oppose the adoption of the new code. The Federation of Trades Unions of Ukraine - Ukraine's largest trade union confederation with 8.7m members - seems to have no strong position.

This is not to say the system isn't flawed. According to statistics of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, 85% of employers inspected turned out to be in violation of existing labour laws. In Europe, Ukraine comes bottom of the table of countries where the right to strike is respected (with Belarus, Estonia, and Russia not doing much better). Illegal and general strikes are non-existent in Ukraine. Wages in the country remain incredibly low. And wage arrears continue to rise: they have long passed the one billion hryvnya mark (£31.2m). Approximately half of these arrears concern enterprises that are still in operation.

The consistently high rate of emigration from Ukraine suggests that Ukrainians, and particularly young people, do not want to work here. Indeed, roughly half of all workers are employed illegally.

Why doesn't the labour code 'work'?

In comparison with many European countries, the Ukrainian labour code provides employees with broad rights - though it may not always guarantee them.

For instance, the code stipulates a 40-hour working week, a continuous leisure period of 42 hours per week, limits on the use of overtime, protection for pregnant women and young mothers from being fired, and the termination of contracts only after the union gives its consent.

That said, the law is not without certain shortcomings which, in turn, have a negative effect on working conditions. Some of these faults stem from the fact that the code was created in the Soviet era, when many of the conditions that now exist in Ukraine were simply unimaginable.

Working hours: The current code does not permit contracts with provisions for working from home or a flexible schedule. For people working in media or IT, this kind of work is the norm. As a result, employees have to make alternative legal arrangements, which deprive them of many social guarantees, such as the right to holidays or sick leave. The fact that practically half of all employees are employed unofficially testifies to the fact that the current regulations are too harsh. Relaxing the rules governing working hours might help the economy come out of the shadows.

Protection and simplified procedures of renewing workers' rights: The current code was developed for a paternalist model, whereby the state kept a strict eye on the enforcement of workers' rights. Today, the State Labour Inspectorate has virtually no authority to influence employers, and opening a criminal case is difficult.

But when the state retreats from the world of work, employees have to have the right to defend themselves, including the right to strike as individuals and to receive credit from the bank in case of wage arrears. Trades unions should receive the right to fine company owners. These kind of norms would make workers themselves capable of applying sanctions, and so relations with employers would become more equal.

What is more, we need to create a system of labour courts - specialised legal institutions, which would examine cases where workers' rights had been violated, quickly and efficiently. Currently, wage arrears cases can last from 12-18 months - even when an individual's rights have clearly been violated.

Gender and discrimination: In terms of gender equality, Ukraine's labour code is far from perfect. Indeed, the code was developed with different ideas about gender.

For example, it does not provide mechanisms, which prohibit the employment of women for less pay than men. At the same time, it forbids the employment of employ women for night work, 'heavy' work and working underground.

While it does contain strict norms, which prevent employers from firing pregnant women and mothers (which in practice means that companies are wary of hiring young women), it lacks provisions which would divide parental and family duties fairly. For example, the March 2010 Council of the European Union directive on parental leave (in conjunction with the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe, European Centre of Employers and Enterprises, European Confederation of Trades Unions) provides non-transferable leave for the father. It states that a father should spend at least one month looking after a newborn child. According to the Ukrainian labour code, though, a couple should decide for themselves who takes leave.

Discrimination receives far too little attention - the general principle of equality of workers' rights of all citizens is declared regardless of differences, but it is unclear how it should be implemented in practice. Likewise, the code makes no mention of issues such as homophobia in the workplace.

Healthcare: The Soviet Union guaranteed everyone the right to free healthcare. After the implosion of the Soviet system, the code's outdated provisions today sound like mere declarations when the state lacks the financial resources to ensure these rights.

The European Union's legislation is more concrete, and guarantees the right to protection of health to workers employed in harmful conditions. Thus, the current Ukrainian code doesn't currently cater for the 2003 European Council directive on the organisation of working hours, which gives employees who work night shifts the right to free medical check-ups and prescriptions.

Management: The tradition of workers' involvement in the management of an enterprise is sadly lacking in Ukraine today. Unfortunately, any kind of moves towards workers' self-organisation and management were killed off back in the Soviet Union.

Today, Ukraine's employers manage their companies from the top down, receiving profits and making all major decisions. Of course, there is nothing to prevent unions from establishing a relationship with their employers on the basis of a collective agreement, but the ability of workers to gain these kinds of concessions is very limited.

Legal guarantees of workers' rights would significantly promote the participation of working collectives in the management of their companies. Towards the end of the 1980s, an entire new section appeared in the labour code regulating these employees' rights. In particular, they concerned the right of employees to elect directors of their enterprises, but these rights were quickly rescinded after Ukraine became independent in 1991.

In the current conditions, the labour code needs to focus on the right of trades unions to representation in company management, including the right to influence decisions on ownership and personnel. Moreover, it should consider removing the laws on commercial secrets for companies with significant revenues or wage arrears - this would give employees extra bargaining power in the form of information.

Protection of workers upon foreclosure: In the Soviet Union, it was impossible to imagine a company going bust. But in today's Ukraine, bankruptcy is common.

Currently, the sale and transfer of property belonging to bankrupt firms takes too long and often bypasses workers. Here, though, we could take our cues from recent European experience, such as the October 1980 directive of the Council of the European Union which regulates the creation of a guaranteed fund for paying wages to employees of bankrupt companies, as well contributions to insurance funds.

The Association Agreement

Yanukovych's failure to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013 was the catalyst for the protests that eventually toppled him. But will the Agreement contain provisions to protect the rights of Ukrainian workers? Employers will lobby for the new labour code in the framework of implementing the Association Agreement, which was ratified back in September 2014.

Of course, European directives do provide a minimal level of protection and the country should provide broader rights for its workers. But there are fears that, in situations when unions fail to apply the right kind of pressure, the state will approach the implementation of the Association Agreement far too formally.

For instance, European Directive No2002/14/EС from March 2002 suggests the termination of contracts should be preceded by a process of 'consultation', rather than consent from the union. Moreover, this process won't even be mandatory at certain companies. The directive does not extend to business with less than 50 employees, which, in effect, restricts union activity at such companies.

Authorial intention

One look at the authors of the new code might also key us into its possible outcomes. The developer of the first draft code No1658) was Mikhailo Papiev, former governor of Chernivtsi and now a Rada deputy from Opposition Bloc (supported by Renat Akhmetov). While Papiev first registered this bill in December 2014, he is now facing the possibility of losing his position due to violations of electoral law in 2012 - a potential criminal prosecution.

In May 2015, a new draft code was submitted by Rada deputies from factions aligned with both Petro Poroshenko and Arseny Yatsenyuk -- Stepan Kubiv and Ludmyla Denisova. Kubiv, former head of the National Bank of Ukraine, is a member of Poroshenko Bloc (supported by Dmytro Firtash during the 2014 presidential election) and is currently under investigation for alleged selective refinancing of financial institutions.

Lyudmyla Denisova, a deputy from Yatsenyuk's People's Front (supported by Ihor Kolomoisky), was Minister of Labour and Social Policy in Yulia Tymoshenko's government (2007-2010), where she lobbied for one of the previous draft Labour Codes. While Denisova occupied the same position in Yatsenyuk's first government in 2014, she is also known as an employer: in 2012, she launched a massive reduction in staff at her own Chernomorskaya television company, which was caught in a wage arrears scandal one year later in 2013. Employees at this TV company were allegedly fired after protesting against the non-payment of wages

Dangers of the new labour code

Of course, today's code has flaws, but it could be amended by another act which would also remove certain important workers' guarantees. The draft code not only has a few odious provisions, but also sections which are absolutely unconstitutional.

According to Article 22 of the Constitution, new laws should not infringe the content and enforcement of basic rights and freedoms. But the draft code infringes social provisions enshrined in the constitution.

For example, the new code will remove the ban on employing women with children under the age of three for night shifts. The maximum probation period will be extended from three to six months. Moreover, the employer can now give 'additional duties' to an employee when it appears that their 'full employment' is not guaranteed (Article 37). If they now carry out work of a lower qualification, then additional payment is not provided. Thus it cannot be excluded that a programmer will have to work as a cleaner without additional pay.

According to Article 24 of the Constitution of Ukraine, citizens have equal constitutional rights and are equal before the law. However, according to the draft Code, certain workers will find themselves in a worse situation only because they work at small businesses or are on a temporary contract. This will invite employers to use these 'exceptions' to the rules.

For example, an employee at a small business (the Commercial Code of Ukraine states that small businesess are those which employ up to 50 people) has to be informed of their redundancy one month in advance, rather than two.

Moreover, small businesses will have to inform their employees of worsening working conditions (such as a cut in pay) one month in advance, rather than the current two (Article 221). It is foreseeable that employers will keep the size of their companies down in order to maintain advantages over their workers. Moreover, employers will find it profitable to arrange temporary contracts of up to two months: this way, they can inform employees of layoffs with just one week's notice (Article 61).

Article 30 of the draft code will permit employers to control the actions of their employees with the aid of technology. This could include video surveillance or inspections of emails. This kind of constant oversight could lead to unreasonable psychological pressure, as noted by the Rada's scientific committee.

At the same time, people may now find it difficult to leave their jobs of their own accord, even if working conditions decline.

For instance, in cases where the employer attempts to prove that their employee has improved their qualifications at the company's expense. Here, the employee is deprived of the right to leave until they work off their 'debt'. Otherwise, they will have to pay compensation.

False benefits

Proponents of the new code point to a few minor improvements as proof of its superiority. For example, the authors often use the argument that they propose to extend annual leave from 24 to 28 days, and there will be penalties for wage arrears.

Perhaps additional regulation on temporary work and non-standard working relations will have some positive outcomes. As the legal experts who represent the interests of employers say: in other situations, you simply wouldn't be able to get hired officially.

But the key failings of the code are precisely the extension of its benefits. There is a danger the code's new possibilities will be used to increase workers' dependence on their employers.

Of course, the authorities see the liberalisation of working relations as a means of attracting foreign investors. Foreign investment in Ukraine is largely discouraged by corruption, however and the state is still yet to show any significant achievement in fighting that particular blight. Because of this it requires ordinary people to forego their rights.

Soon, Ukraine's sole competitive edge in the European market will consist of having the lowest paid workers with the fewest rights. As the vice president of asset management company Development Construction Holding Olena Derevyanko recently stated, commenting on Ukraine's poor economic situation: 'For real people, this is bad news. But it's good news for those who want to conduct business in Ukraine: expenditure on wages will be quite different from other countries.' Formerly part of UkrSibBank, Ukraine's third largest bank and a subsidary of BNP Paribas, Development Construction Holding is currently conducting presentations to attract European capital in Ukraine.

Likewise, the provision of greater benefits to small business when it comes to firing employees seems far from justified. Small business should be stimulated with access to loans, fighting corruption and simplifying the tax system, not through the enslavement of workers. There is no guarantee that the liberalisation of labour relationships will help the grey economy come out of the shadows.

For example, the 50% reduction in the unified social security contribution at the start of 2015 did not lead to a significant statistical increase in officially-employed workers. This social security payment was introduced in 2010 to consolidate previous separate payments (for pensions, healthcare, unenemployment benefits) made by employers. Given that it amounts to 41% of payroll, it is thought to contribute to the low rate of official employment, and has been a point of contention in negotiations with the IMF.

Regardless of possible amendments, the draft labour code is unacceptable from the point of view of Ukraine's working people. Its advantages do not make employees any less dependent on their employers, and does not provide a space for contestation. Ultimately, why should we care about the hypothetical possibility of extended leave if an employee can be fired on a trumped up charge without union consent?

At the same time, new legal institutions are being proposed that will lead to even greater dependency of workers on their employers. While the current code is far from perfect, the question of labour reform should be postponed, at least until the emergence of political parties which truly represent the interests of workers.

While Pavlo Rozenko, Minister of Labour and Social Policy, has stated that the new labour code should be adopted by July 2015 (the programme of government envisages the adoption of this law by the end of the year), it is unlikely that the government will move on this controversial subject before local elections this October.

Still though, the future looks grim. For as long as the oligarchs have a monopoly on power, reforms will only be carried out in their interests.

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 #29
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
June 8, 2015
Crushing Gays and Maidan 3.0: How Right Wing Gang Violence Works in Ukraine
Maidan regime obliged to tolerate violence of far right groups it depends on to suppress its enemies.
By Alexander Mercouris

The last few days have seen Ukraine's far right groups in action again: violently dispersing an anti-government protest on Maidan Square hours after they violently dispersed an attempt to hold a gay pride parade in Kiev.

The two incidents taken together illustrate the role of far right groups in today's Ukraine.

Western governments and media try to minimise the importance of these groups by pointing to their very limited election success.  

In reality, as I explained when I discussed the outcome of Ukraine's last parliamentary elections back in October (see Western Media Get Ukraine Elections Wrong. There's Big Trouble Ahead, Russia Insider, 31st October 2014) lack of support in elections scarcely matters to groups that are by definition anti-democratic and which are therefore in principle hostile to democratic elections.  These groups are however important to the Maidan regime because they can be used to suppress the regime's enemies and to control the streets:
 
"As for the Right Sector and various Nazi groups, the fact that they have little electoral support (a point endlessly made by the regime's apologists) does not reduce their real political role.  This is not to win elections; as militantly anti-democratic organisations they have little interest in doing so.  It is to actively terrorize and intimidate the regime's enemies."

Given the economic crisis in Ukraine and the widespread disaffection it has caused, popular protests on Maidan Square might easily evolve into a serious challenge to the Maidan regime.  After the trauma of the Maidan coup, the police and security services probably cannot be relied on.  The militants of the far right groups however can, and they were quickly brought in to disperse the protests, which they did, just as they did in Odessa in May last year.

In return the Maidan regime has to tolerate the violence and criminal behaviour of these groups, the violence against Ukraine's LGBT community being a case in point.  

Every so often things go just a bit too far, provoking the odd crackdown on the groups' wilder members.  

Thus in March last year we saw the killing by the police of the Right Sector militant Aleksandr Muzychko (also known as Sashko Bilyi) and in May this year we saw the arrest following an attempted hold-up of the Aidar Battalion's Vita Zaveruha (the subject of a now notorious feature in Elle).

However the reality of today's Ukraine is that street-level violence and criminality have now become an integral element of its political system.

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 #30
Kyiv Post
June 8, 2015
Tent camp set up by mysterious group attacked by thugs
By Oleg Sukhov

A tent camp set up on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv by demonstrators protesting against President Petro Poroshenko was dismantled by unknown attackers early on June 8.

The protesters blamed the attack on thugs allegedly hired by the authorities, while the police started a criminal investigation against the attackers under the hooliganism article.

The protest was held by an obscure group, triggering speculation on who organized it.

One of the demonstrators who attended the protest site on Maidan Nezalezhnosti on June 8 told the Kyiv Post he was a former Aidar Battalion fighter with the nom-de-guerre Sukhoi and wore a uniform with Aidar insignia.

He blamed the attack on "titushki" hired by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov or Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Titushki is a common term for pro-government thugs that originally referred to those financed by ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.

Another protester, Dmytro Zvolinsky, said the tents had been dismantled by a special forces unit. He argued that the fast and professional character of the attack proved his theory.

Artem Shevchenko, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said at a news briefing on June 8 that the police did not know who the attackers were.

"A group of up to 17 people took these tents and threw them away," he said. "We don't know who these people were but we hope to identify them."

He also said that no one had been arrested at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti protest camp.

But Zvolinsky claimed that the organizer of the protest, Rustam Tashbayev, had been kidnapped and then "hidden" by the police.

After that he was transferred to the Security Service, which is checking his passport because he failed to change his photo at a certain age, Zvolinsky added.

When asked about Tashbayev, Shevchenko urged reporters to contact the Security Service, which was unavailable for comment.

The demonstrators have called their movement the Third Maidan, intended to be a follow-up to the 2004 Orange Revolution on Maidan Nezalezhnosti and the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.

They have protested against increases in utilities prices, the General Staff's mistakes, pervasive corruption and a lack of progress in the investigation into the murders of EuroMaidan protesters.

Dozens of protesters have permanently camped on Maidan Nezalezhnosti since May 25 and set up tents there on June 7.

They have urged Poroshenko to come to Maidan Nezalezhnosti and report on his achievements.

"I gave the president a month to fulfill at least one of his small promises," Zvolinsky said. "When nothing was done, I joined the opposition."

The protest was organized by obscure groups and activists that have never surfaced before, prompting speculation that the demonstrators were hired by someone for money, possibly by the Kremlin - an accusation that the demonstrators deny.

"I think these (events) are aimed at destabilizing the situation in Kyiv at the same exact time when a G7 meeting was held in Germany, and (Russian President Vladimir Putin) was told: 'No peace in Donbas and no return of Crimea - no abolition of sanctions'," Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the interior minister and a member of parliament, wrote on Facebook on June 8.

Tashbayev's Facebook page says that he works at two little-known groups, the Ukrainian Political Alliance and the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.

On June 6, he posted a link to a story about the Maidan Nezalezhnosti protests by RIA Novosti, a Russian state-run news agency.

Tashbayev, who was not available for comment, used to live in the U.S. and has boasted that he knows U.S. Senator John McCain, a staunch ally of Ukraine. McCain's office could not immediately comment on whether this is true.

The protests have been actively used by Kremlin propaganda to demonize Ukrainian authorities in an effort to destabilize the political situation.

In a Facebook post published on June 8, Ukrainian journalist Irina Kaminskaya cited some of the demonstrators as calling for talks on a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict with Viktor Medvedchuk, Ukraine's pro-Russian politician par excellence, and claiming that they would soon have a meeting with him.

They also accused Ukrainian authorities of being reluctant to hold talks with Russia, Kaminskaya wrote.

However, Sukhoi, one of the protesters, said he supported a more hardline stance towards Russia and called for introducing martial law.

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 #31
Ukraine government steering country into political and economic default - opposition

KIEV, June 9. /TASS/. The incumbent Ukrainian authorities are steering the country toward political and economic default, Prime Minister of Ukraine's shadow government Boris Kolesnikov told a meeting of the opposition cabinet on Tuesday.

"The authorities do not understand what they are doing. As early as last September, it was recognized that there was no military solution to the conflict. Now it's June, the first anniversary of the Minsk agreements is just two months away. Thousands of people have died, the industrial heartland of our country - the Donbas region - has been destroyed. And what are the authorities talking about? Here are two laws specifying how to impose martial law and how to provide legal framework for default. Judging by their actions, what the authorities are really after is not a reform of the constitution or the adoption of a new one. They are to fast-track the introduction of martial law with the net effect of an economic and political default and chaos. The authorities must tell the Ukrainian people whether they are ready to secure peace and ensure decentralization," Kolesnikov said.

The politician noted that no country would provide Ukraine with the lethal weapons, and if this happened, the whole of Ukraine would become a testing ground for new types of weapons. "Ukraine will turn into Vietnam of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It will become a testing ground for weapons of the two systems, the most powerful at the time. If the authorities want such scenario for Ukraine, it's simpler to change them," Kolesnikov added.

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 #32
Wall Street Journal
June 9, 2015
Anger Grows Behind Rebel Lines as Ukraine Limits Access
Long waits at checkpoints deter crossings; food, medical supplies run short
By LAURA MILLS

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine-Once a month, Nina Petrenko and her husband drive across the front line here to pick up their government pension and buy groceries. Both are often hard to get behind rebel lines, where they live.

Each time, things get a little more complicated. The lines at Ukrainian government checkpoints get longer, meaning a journey that once took a couple hours now regularly takes up to 12. This time they are returning empty-handed after being denied their pensions on the grounds that they live in rebel territory full time.

"Ukraine is my homeland," said Ms. Petrenko, who was born in western Ukraine but moved east to Donetsk-now the capital of a self-proclaimed rebel republic-after she met her husband 35 years ago.

"But I don't understand the government" in Kiev, she said. "Maybe they want the territory, but they don't care about the people."

While a February peace plan has succeeded in reducing fighting and civilian casualties, its provisions on reviving economic ties in eastern Ukraine exist only on paper. On the ground, a de facto border has formed as Kiev has tightened rules and set up checkpoints around the rebel-held territory.

Moscow and the rebels accuse Kiev of mounting an economic blockade, while Kiev says extra security is needed to prevent rebel fighters or weapons from crossing the line.

"The absence of groceries and medicine is a result, but the reason for the problem is...aggression against Ukraine," said Iryna Herashchenko, a presidential envoy to east Ukraine. She said the government was committed to rebuilding ties with rebel-held regions, but continuing violence was hampering the effort.

But locals say the longer their isolation lasts, the harder it will be for Kiev to win the territories back.

Anatoly Karpenko, an evangelical priest living in rebel-held territory, has shut down two of seven soup kitchens he ran for the elderly because it has become more difficult to bring food through government checkpoints, he says. Other goods are getting harder to transport, too-he recently paid 2,000 hryvnia ($96) to a border guard on the government side to deliver diapers to an orphanage behind rebel lines.

"Before, they [the border guards] used to say: we can't let you in because you might be feeding the separatists....Now they don't even try to explain," he said.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which runs a monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine, said in May that vital medical supplies have dwindled in hospitals behind rebel lines, as humanitarian aid groups are frequently denied passage through government checkpoints.

After Ukraine implemented a system of entry and exit permits in late January, bribery has flourished along with bureaucracy. The OSCE documented regular complaints from locals claiming they were forced to pay hefty bribes for permits. The rebel side doesn't require permits to cross its checkpoints.

In response to the OSCE's report, President Petro Poroshenko said that while he agreed political and economic reintegration of rebel territories was crucial, it would begin "only after a cease-fire is fully ensured."

Maxim Zelensky, a member of the Ukrainian Logistics Association, an industry lobby, estimates that trade between government and rebel-held territory has fallen by about 70% since the beginning of the year.

"Now, on the one hand there is a border, and on the other hand businesses clearly understand they could go unpaid" because of a certain degree of lawlessness on the rebel side, he said.

As domestic trade has collapsed, some businesses have been forced to turn to Russia, where prices are higher and customs duties add to the cost and complication.

The manager of a company that transports groceries to the rebel-held city of Donetsk attempted to keep up deliveries this year even when drivers from the firm were regularly stopped, detained for days or faced demands from by Ukrainian border guards for bribes-$2,000 or more per load, she says.

"On the other [rebel] side they don't demand anything, because there everybody wants to eat-it doesn't matter where it came from, what it is, what it costs," she says.

So her firm joined with a Russian company to import produce from there into Donetsk. Now she spends her days on the phone to Russia, making sure that everything from international certifications to duty tariffs are ready for the Russian customs officers.

At the checkpoint in Kurakhove, the Petrenkos, stuck in a line of about 100 cars, knew they could be in for another long wait. They milled around with other drivers, comparing tips about different checkpoints and trading updates on the latest fighting.

"Give me the opportunity to work and live peacefully and I don't care who is in power," says Ms. Petrenko, who lost her job selling lottery tickets when the rebels took over. "Leave us alone and let us live."

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 #33
Donetsk, Luhansk self-proclaimed republics ready to remain part of Ukraine

MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/. The self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics (LPR and DPR) are ready to remain part of Ukraine for the sake of ending hostilities in Donbas, LPR plenipotentiary representative in the Contact Group on Ukraine Vladislav Deinego said Tuesday while commenting on new proposals from the LPR and DPR on amendments to the Ukrainian constitution.

"The fact that Luhansk and Donetsk are ready to meet the Kiev authorities halfway was announced not now by our proposals for the constitution, and not even in the winter. It was announced by the republics back in September last year at the first meeting in Minsk," LuganskInformCenter quoted Deinego as saying.

"The documents signed September 5 [last year] stipulate movement in that direction. Back then, despite military successes of the militia, for the sake of stopping bloodshed, the republics agreed to such a huge compromise and to remain part of Ukraine as independent entities," he said.

"It seems unthinkable, but people who seized power in Kiev are not ready to meet halfway our integration back into Ukraine by means of decentralization. Nevertheless, we are still ready for peaceful constructive dialogue and continuation of that process," Deinego said.

On Monday, DPR and LPR representatives sent coordinator of the Contact Group's political working subgroup from the OSCE Pierre Morel additional proposals regarding draft amendments to the Ukrainian constitution.

In particular, they suggest stipulating that the Ukrainian law "On a special procedure of local self-rule in certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions" be valid without time limits. It is also suggested that the function of ending the powers of chief executives of certain districts with a special status in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions be solely in the jurisdiction of those regions.

It is also suggested that the function of ending the powers of chief executives of certain districts with a special status in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions be solely in the jurisdiction of those regions.

Kiev has regularly violated the ceasefire regime imposed as part of the Package of Measures on implementation of the September 2014 Minsk agreements. The Package (Minsk-2) was signed on February 12, 2015 in the Belarusian capital Minsk by participants of the Contact Group on settlement in Donbas.

The Package, earlier agreed with the leaders of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine) first of all envisions an overwhelming cessation of fire and withdrawal of heavy armaments to create a security area in the region at least 50 kilometers wide.

The constitutional reform and decentralization of power in Ukraine are also among the document's key provisions. The renewed fundamental law should enter into force by the end of this year. The Package of Measures stipulates the holding, in districts with a special status, of local elections, agreed with representatives of the region and corresponding to OSCE standards.

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#34
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
June 8, 2015
New escalation of violence in Donbas: the end of Minsk agreements?
Despite disturbing signs that there has been an uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine, the Minsk 2 ceasefire is unlikely to collapse for now. But sooner or later, Kiev will have to come to the negotiating table.
By James Carden
James Carden served as an Advisor to the US-Russia Presidential Commission at the US State Department. Since then, he has contributed articles on US-Russia policy to The National Interest and The Moscow Times.

Over the past week, the American media has been sounding the alarm over what is widely perceived as a renewed Russian-backed offensive in eastern Ukraine. Observations range from the plausible, such as the commentary of correspondent Oliver Carroll suggesting that there has been a "notable increase in military activity in recent weeks," to the downright fanciful.

One American journalist with a particularly active imagination took to his column at Bloomberg View to inform readers that the Russian government had dispatched mobile crematoriums to the Donbas region, presumably in order to help hide the evidence of fallen Russian military personnel.

Nevertheless, it is true that the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine has noted an uptick in violence over the past few weeks. On June 3, the SMM released a report in which they noted a "sharp increase in the number of ceasefire violations at and around the Donetsk airport" and not far off, at the Donetsk Central Railway Station, the SMM reported 249 explosions over a nine-hour period.

This weekend, the SMM reported an increase in civilian casualties inside the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, noting that, "From May 30 to June 4, six female corpses and 38 male corpses were delivered to morgues with causes of death injuries received as a result of shelling."

In the Petrovskyi district of Donetsk, the SMM was told that, on June 3, "84 military men and 21 civilians (four men, 17 women, mostly elderly) had been treated in the hospital for shrapnel injuries as a result of shelling."

Further fighting was observed to have erupted in the government-controlled town of Marinka, while in Luhansk (also government-controlled) "the village inhabitants informed the SMM by telephone that children attending the village kindergarten were sheltered in the basement due to on-going shelling of the village."

While the new uptick in fighting is indeed disturbing and may pose a direct threat to the new ceasefire agreement hammered out in Minsk in February, it might be useful to a keep couple of things in mind.

First, fighting in and around Donetsk is not new and has continued almost daily in the vicinity of the airport. Fighting there was far heavier in late winter and early spring than it is now. Indeed, in late March a video taken by a Serbian member of the rebel Army of Novorossiya showed that the fighting at the airport remained so intense that corpses of Ukrainian soldiers remained scattered among the rubble of the airport, irretrievable.

Second, ceasefire violations, if said to be initiated by the pro-Russian forces, generate outrage and headlines in the Western media. Ceasefire violations, if reported to be directed against the pro-Russian forces, do not.

To wit: On April 12 the SMM reported the following:

"Both the Ukrainian Armed Forces representative and the Russian Federation representative to the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC) told the SMM that the Ukrainian side (assessed to be the Right Sector volunteer battalion) earlier had made an offensive push through the line of contact towards Zhabunki..."

The above report shows that Kiev has tenuous control over the far right volunteer forces ostensibly under its purview; and that it was those forces who initiated (yet another) round of post-ceasefire fighting. Not so surprisingly, these revelations did not ignite a chorus of Western media headlines deploring this development as the "end of Minsk" nor was it even noted as a serious "violation of the ceasefire" at the time.

All of this is to simply say that the implications of the recent round of fighting do not necessarily mean that the ceasefire will wholly collapse. But since we are no doubt getting close to that moment, the principle actors in the unfolding drama (the Normandy 4 + the U.S.) ought to be doing their part to uphold Minsk and that means, among others things, removing foreign forces from the territory of eastern Ukraine and starting negotiations between Kiev and the representatives of the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Yet, thus far, Kiev, in contravention of the accords, has refused to negotiate. So it remains incumbent upon the Western members of the Normandy quartet, as well as the U.S., to persuade Kiev to do so.

The question that remains is: Will they?
 

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 #35
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
June 8, 2015
The military escalation in Donbas leaves Minsk agreements in limbo
There are three major reasons to fear the collapse of the Minsk agreements, especially if there is a continued offensive by either side that goes well beyond the clashes at Marinka on June 3.
By Pavel Verkhniatskyi
Pavel Verkhniatskyi is the director of the Kiev-based Center for Operational Strategic Analysis (COSA), an independent analytical center that offers the expertise of both local and international analysts.

Last week the Donbas saw a marked increase in military activity. The clashes at Marinka were entirely out of tune with the generally measured flow of the conflict, which had been characterized by a relatively low level of shelling and limited use of heavy artillery since the most recent talks in Minsk between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

However, the fighting cannot be said to have been brought to a complete halt during this period, and reports about the regrouping of militants and machinery along the boundary line abounded. So the attack on the morning of June 3 was hardly unexpected.

Determining the specific cause of the renewed belligerence, or an isolated burst of military activity during the conflict specifically aimed at destabilizing the situation in Ukraine, may not be a priority, but the events leading up to and accompanying the attack need to be considered for any understanding of the situation.

First up is the latest meeting in Minsk of the working groups as well as the Contact Group set up to regulate the situation in southeastern Ukraine. Every such meeting seems to go hand in hand with a spike in military activity, as if the militants are deliberately trying to put pressure on Kiev during the negotiations. The method is simple and crude, but has been relatively effective so far.

But the snag is that the "storming of Marinka" differed from previous similar situations by one important parameter: the Ukrainian command returned fire, including with the use of heavy artillery, something it had previously eschewed to avoid charges of violating the Minsk agreements. It should be noted that Ukraine has openly admitted that it used artillery.

The Ukrainian command, under severe internal pressure from veterans and civilians alike for showing too much passivity and an inadequate response to the militant attacks, decided in the end to circumvent some points of the Minsk agreements to avert defeat and not to squander its positions and personnel.
Such tactics make it clear to the Donbas leaders that the response to any rise in hostilities will be symmetric, even if it means the collapse of the Minsk agreements in the event of a continued offensive by one of the sides.

The problem is that the plan to destabilize Ukraine might not presume compliance with peace initiatives of any kind. However, Ukraine's armed response will help retain its positions and strengthen public trust, which is extremely important for the Ukrainian authorities in the present situation against a backdrop of economic woes.

That leads to the second point to be mentioned in the context of the Marinka clashes - the economic climate. Clearly, given the war of attrition, economic sanctions and social hardships, the question of stabilizing the economic situation is of acute importance for both Ukraine and Russia.

In the meantime, talks are ongoing within the framework of the Russia-Ukraine-EU tripartite group on supplies of Russian gas to Ukraine. June 3 was also the date that Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak marked for the signing of a new package of gas agreements, under which Ukraine will assume responsibility for purchasing Russian gas and pumping it into underground storage facilities.

Interestingly, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said recently that Ukraine was reducing imports of Russian gas to minimize energy dependence on the Kremlin.

If Ukraine does indeed take on additional commitments for the purchase of natural gas from Russia, the Ukrainian public will perceive it as backtracking by the government, which is highly undesirable in the interests of social stability. The gas question should not be seen as the only potential cause of the assault on Marinka, but one should not lose sight of it when considering the events taking place in and around Ukraine.

The third major factor that might have provoked the Donbas militants is the Ukrainian parliament's support for a bill to amend the law "On the admission and terms and conditions of residence of foreign armed forces on the territory of Ukraine."

The bill seeks to add a number of provisions allowing the armed forces of other countries to remain on Ukrainian soil, on which basis Ukraine, at its request, can be granted aid in the form of international peacekeeping and security missions under the aegis of the UN and/or EU. In addition, it envisages a ban on the presence of armed forces of countries that commit armed aggression against Ukraine.

The Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine's parliament - Editor's note] considered the bill only after the storming of Marinka, yet that does not detract from its significance, since it is obvious that the Russian Federation was privy to the Rada's agenda. It is not ruled out that a military strike was ordered to put pressure on Kiev.

The Ukrainian Parliament would support the bill, even though in the case of its failure to throw back the rebels. In this case, such a tough military move looks like not as a cool-headed calculus, but rather as an emotional stance, which could indicate that Russia's non-military leverages of pressure on Ukraine through different agents are weakening.

If so, the threat to the peace agreements and initiatives is rising, as are the likelihood of a new spiral of informational warfare and the remoteness of a peaceful resolution.

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 #36
Newsweek.com
June 8, 2015
Russia's Ukrainian Retreat
BY OWEN MATTHEWS

Is Vladimir Putin mounting a charm offensive, a military offensive or both? Last month, Russia's president greeted U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with conspicuous warmth at a newly built palace in Sochi for their first meeting since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. They talked about eastern Ukraine's future not as a piece of Russia, nor as a Kremlin-backed breakaway republic, but under the rule of Kiev. Summoning his friendliest smile, Putin proclaimed at his annual spring press conference that his country "has no enemies." And as if on cue, the Russian-backed leaders of Ukraine's breakaway regions announced that the idea of Novorossiya-a czarist-era term describing a swath of southern Ukraine that Putin used to hint belonged back under Moscow's control-is officially dead.

"The Kremlin has effectively admitted defeat, no matter how it tries to spin it,"wrote Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. "Moscow seems to have come to the realization that Ukraine has been lost."

Yet at the same time, early June saw the first major breakdown of a fragile cease-fire in Ukraine, as separatist forces battled with tanks and rocket launchers for control of Maryinka and Krasnohorivka. That might signal the start of a major rebel push to take the strategic port of Mariupol. And, more worrisome, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as well as Western embassies have reported that since early May, Russia has been sending rebels the kind of hardware they need for a major assault on Ukrainian lines-from UR-77 Meteorit mine-clearing vehicles to engineering units trained to deploy floating pontoon bridges. On May 17, Ukrainian troops intercepted a Russian reconnaissance team that had surreptitiously crossed the Seversky Donets River, north of Luhansk, and captured two Russians after a firefight. Both admitted being members of the 3rd Spetsnaz Brigade, on a mission to probe weaknesses in the Ukrainian defenses.

A few days later, Ukrainians shot down a Russian-made Forpost drone, the most sophisticated in Moscow's armory, which had been scanning Ukrainian positions near Mariupol. "If they break through in Maryinka, our forces could be encircled," Valentin Manko, deputy commander of a battalion of Ukrainian volunteers known as Dnepr-1, told Ukrainian television on June 2, warning that the offensive could become "a new Debaltsevo," a reference to an important Kiev-held railhead that fell to Russian-backed rebels in mid-February.

Russia's Spetznaz special forces call the art of concealing your true intentions to confuse the enemy maskirovka. But is Putin's diplomacy just maskirovka-or is he truly looking for a face-saving way to terminate his Ukrainian adventure? In one sense, the war is in its endgame, whether the Kremlin likes it or not. Rebels may yet expand their territory a little, but the dream of many Russian imperial nostalgists that great swaths of Russian-speaking Ukraine would flock to join Moscow has faded. Many major cities in central Ukraine, such as Kharkov, Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk, are home to majority Russian-speaking populations, and yet they strongly support Kiev and are covered in symbols of Ukrainian nationhood, from flags in apartment windows to traffic bollards, fences and clothes in the national colors of yellow and blue.

Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk has supplied two of the fiercest volunteer battalions to the front line, Dnipro-1 and Dnipro-2, financed by two oligarchs who are prominent members of the local Jewish community. "Ukraine's population is only 17 percent ethnically Russian," says Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. "Putin always mangled this fact, claiming that 17 million Ukrainians were ethnic Russians, which would equate to 37 percent of the population." If anything, Pifer says, "Russia's aggression appears to be erasing the dividing line.... One unintended consequence of the conflict is [a new] sense of Ukrainian unity."

Putin also miscalculated the cost of the war. Annexing Crimea brought Putin tremendous short-term glory-but the resulting U.S. and European Union sanctions, in conjunction with falling oil prices, sent the Russian economy into a tailspin. The ruble lost half its value, and, despite a muted recovery in oil and a boost to industry from the devaluation, Russia's economy is set to shrink by 2.7 percent this year, according to a World Bank report. Yet Putin waved off the economic impact in April, claiming that "nothing burst, everything's working." But Russia's banking sector could collapse if sanctions are extended or tightened, for instance by excluding Russia from the SWIFT international payment system. If that happens, the fragile feeling of normalcy that still prevails in Moscow's markets, restaurants and shopping centers would quickly evaporate as the country's money flow seizes up.

Kerry's visit signaled that the West is ready to begin a delicate diplomatic dance to reach a lasting political settlement in Ukraine. Everyone-even, it seems, the Kremlin-agrees that the rebel areas of Donetsk and Luhansk will remain inside Ukraine. The crucial question is, With what degree of autonomy? If the recent fate of Yugoslavia is anything to go by, it's a vital question if Ukraine is to remain a viable state.

The Kremlin is pressing for Ukraine to become a federation like Bosnia, which was divided at the 1995 Dayton Accords into a pro-Western Bosnian-Croat area and the Republika Srpska, backed by neighboring Serbia. Both are de facto autonomous states within a state with their presidents, parliaments and courts. Bosnia's "central government, with its tripartite presidency and ethnically fractured parliament, [is] largely impotent," says Brian Whitmore, author of the influential The Power Vertical blog. "Bosnia remains a dysfunctional state. And nearly a decade after [Slobodan] Milosevic's death, Serbia continues to use Republika Srpska to paralyze and manipulate the country and cripple its efforts to join mainstream Europe." Kiev would much prefer to see an arrangement akin to that of Srpska Krajina, an ethnic Serbian slice of Croatia that was given some initial autonomy after the war but was quickly reabsorbed into a united Croatia-which joined the European Union in 2012.

Some Ukrainians are already suspicious that the U.S. is keen to do a deal with Russia to carve up their country behind Kiev's back. "FYI Ukraine doesn't need a new Dayton agreement which cemented Bosnia as an ever-failed state," tweeted Ukrainian journalist Myroslava Petsa in response to the Kerry-Putin talks. "Was convenient for the West, not the Bosnians." Both Washington and Moscow said the fate of the annexed Crimean Peninsula was not mentioned in the Sochi talks (nor is Crimea spoken of in either of the cease-fire agreements signed in Minsk by the EU, U.S. and Russia). Kerry had bigger concerns, such as securing Russian cooperation on an Iran deal and Syria.

Yet Crimea's status remains intractable. Kiev wants it back. The Kremlin wants the territory internationally recognized as part of Russia. "In diplomacy you are in the business of the possible-and [Russia] returning Crimea to Ukraine clearly isn't remotely in the realm of the possible," says one senior European diplomat who has worked in Ukraine since the conflict began. "Some American colleagues may be thinking in terms of a grand bargain-to exchange recognition of Crimea for full [Russian] withdrawal, and cooperation in the Middle East.... But for Europeans, that is a hard thing to ask."

Jose Manuel Barroso, who was head of the European Commission at the time of Crimea's annexation, last month described Putin's move as "the most blatant violation of international law since the end of World War II." He added, "The EU is based on opposition to extreme nationalism." Even after a massive lobbying effort in Germany, Russia's traditional ally and biggest trading partner, Putin has failed to get any sympathy for his Crimean land grab. For most Europeans, who suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or both, legitimizing aggression is a red line not to be crossed.

Yet in some senses, Putin has succeeded. In a film commissioned by the Kremlin to commemorate the first anniversary of the seizure of Crimea, Putin explained that the shared Ukrainian-Russian naval base of Sevastopol had to be saved from falling into the hands of NATO. And on a more profound level, while the Moscow-backed pro-Russian rebellion in the east may have strengthened Ukraine's sense of nationhood, it has profoundly destabilized Ukraine's economy and politics. Over a third of a $40 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund will go toward paying off some of Kiev's debts-without it, the country would be in default. Corruption continues unabated, including in the Ministry of Defense, which in April announced that it had sent 39 brand-new Oplot tanks to Thailand, to honor a $200 million contract signed in 2011, rather than send them to defend Mariupol. The Ministry officials responsible for that decision had allegedly prioritized the shipment because they had taken a cut of the Thai money for themselves. At the same time, Ukrainian units on the front lines are poorly equipped, badly fed and ill-disciplined-one reason why many young men choose to join the more fanatical but better organized and supplied volunteer battalions such as Dnipro-1.

If the latest offensive carries rebels through to the strategic port of Mariupol, they will doubtless claim that the port will help make their territory more independent. In truth, Mariupol won't make much difference to the shattered coal and steel-based economy of Donbas. But the real damage of further military defeat will be felt in Kiev.

"Ultimately, this war will be lost by the ineptitude, corruption and arrogance of Ukraine's political class, who so far refuses to mobilize the nation, indulges in corruption and nepotism, and spurned time and again Western advice on how to fight the war and how to fight corruption," says Kiev-based blogger and filmmaker Thomas Theiner. "Neither Euromaidan [the revolt that toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych] nor a war with 10,000 deaths managed to bring Ukraine's elite to abandon its criminal, corrupt ways. And if a nation can't get its act together when it is under massive military attack, does it even deserve to exist?"

Many of the activists who participated in the Maidan protests vowed to come back onto the streets if the new government of chocolate magnate-turned-president Petro Poroshenko shows itself to be as corrupt and incompetent as the one the protesters overthrew in February 2014.

The best-case scenario is that the separatist territories agree to hold Ukraine's local elections, scheduled for October 25, with all Ukrainian and local political forces participating under international election monitoring. The likely winner will be the Oppositionist Bloc led by deposed President Yanukovych's one-time chief of staff, Sergei Levochkin-once hailed by The Economist as a "reform-minded" man. That could be a face-saving solution acceptable to Kiev, Moscow and Washington. But Putin has a long track record of establishing the facts on the ground first and negotiating later. That's what the current rebel offensive is likely about-a show of strength that will discredit Poroshenko and boost the rebels' negotiating position to dismember Kiev's central power. Russia cannot really win this war-but Ukraine could still lose it.

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 #37
Regarding Ukraine, Putin's Actions Undercut Putin's Arguments, 'Nezavisimaya Gazeta' Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, June 9 - Russian actions in Crimea and the Donbas "have weakened Russian arguments about the change of power in Kyiv" at the time of the Maidan and thus cost Moscow support in European and other Western capitals, according to a lead article in "Nezavisimaya gazeta" today.

In his interview with "Corriere della Sera," Vladimir Putin repeated his longstanding views about the Maidan and the subsequent change of power in Ukraine, arguing that the change in power in Kyiv was unconstitutional and that the West should not be supporting those who came to power as a result (ng.ru/editorial/2015-06-09/2_red.html).

Moreover, in the same interview, Putin suggested that the reason the Maidan happened was because then incumbent president Viktor Yanukovich did not immediately sign an agreement with the European Union. "But the new authorities also put off its signing. So why should the former have been overthrown if they behaved reasonably?" in Putin's view.

Many would dispute Putin's version of events and suggest that Yanukovich "delegitimized himself" as a result of a whole range of actions. But Putin's argument "is not without an internal logic" and might have been accepted by Europe as significant "if it were not for two 'buts' - Crimea and the Donbas."

Most of the European political establishment and society, the Moscow paper's editors say, "consider that Russia seized and continues to occupy the territory of a sovereign state," something that for them is "completely unacceptable." And consequently, they are not interested in what Putin has to say about the Maidan even while they are convinced that Kyiv's effort to join the West and "defend itself from an aggressive neighbor" is completely reasonable.

"Putin cannot present the annexation of Crimea in a way that the Europeans will consider it as well-based," the paper says. The Kosovo argument "doesn't work," given that Milosevich was in the eyes of the Europeans carrying out a genocide against the Albanians, something for which there was no analogy in Ukraine.

Nor does his argument that Crimea became part of Russia as the result of an expression of the popular will, the editors continue.  Europeans believe that for such a referendum to be valid, it has to be procedurally correct, correspond to Constitutional norms, and involve more time for free debate about its outcome.

Consequently, "if Russia criticizes the change in power in Kyiv as procedural arbitrariness, then does this mean that [the world] must welcome such arbitrary actions in Crimea? How do new mistakes with far-reaching consequences assist in the correction of previous mistakes?"

At the same time, the paper points out, "few in Europe believe that Russia is not providing active support to the militants in the Donbas, not supplying them with arms, not consulting with them, and not sending into the region its own soldiers." Given that, few Europeans are willing to listen to Putin's argument about anything else.

And that includes Putin's arguments about Eurasian integration.  He insists it is like European integration and thus is upset that Europeans do not support it. After all, why should they have anything against Moscow when Russia is only doing what they are? But for Europeans, Putin's analogy in this regard is not convincing either.

"The European Union is an historically unprecedented project," the Moscow paper says. "But the integration processes which have Moscow as their center recall to Western Europe the Soviet Union which for decades was conceived as an opponent. Any movement toward the reintegration of the post-Soviet space generates among Europeans distrust and fear."

Moreover, the paper continues, "Russia is not doing anything to dispel this fear. On the contrary, to take pride in the Soviet past and 'the times when they feared us' are considered correct in the Russian Federation."

European integration is "super-national" and based on "blurring" the borders of member states, "Nezavisimaya gazeta" says. "If Russia asserts that its project is analogous, then why does its ruling elite talk so often about some kind of Russian world? And why has it annexed Crimea if integration processes are objective and Ukraine has nowhere to escape from them?"

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 #38
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
June 8, 2015
G7 and Sanctions: Doubling Down on a Failed Policy
The G7 summit ends with a demand to extend sanctions which are achieving none of the objectives for which they were imposed
By Alexander Mercouris
Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law.  He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law.  He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law. His family has been prominent in Greek politics for several generations.  He is a frequent commentator on television and speaker at conferences.  He resides in London.

As we predicted (see Why EU Sanctions On Russia Will Be Extended In June, Russia Insider, 5th June 2015) the G7 summit has ended with a commitment to continue the sanctions against Russia.

Though the decision to continue with the EU's sanctions is supposedly made by the EU and not by the G7, no one should be under any doubt that at the forthcoming EU summit the G7 decision to extend the sanctions will be carried out.  

The arrogant tone of the G7 summit's communique, essentially taking the extension of the sanctions for granted, all but confirms it.  

These are the precise words:

"We recall that the duration of sanctions should be clearly linked to Russia's complete implementation of the Minsk agreements and respect for Ukraine's sovereignty. They can be rolled back when Russia meets these commitments. However, we also stand ready to take further restrictive measures in order to increase cost on Russia should its actions so require. We expect Russia to stop trans-border support of separatist forces and to use its considerable influence over the separatists to meet their Minsk commitments in full."

The supposed link in the "duration of sanctions" to "Russia's complete implementation of the Minsk agreements" ignores the fact that the text of the Minsk Memorandum places the burden of its implementation on Ukraine, not Russia. It is Ukraine that has failed to implement the Minsk Memorandum's provisions, not Russia.

The real question is not whether the EU summit will carry out the G7's orders by extending the sanctions. It is why the G7 is persisting with a policy that has failed, and why it continues to blame Russia for its failure.

The sanctions have made the recession in the Russian economy deeper than it otherwise would have been.  However a recession would have happened anyway because of the fall in the oil price.

It is a recession not a collapse, and forecasts suggest (see Russian Central Bank Forecasts End of Recession in Final Quarter, Russia Insider, 8th June 2015) it may already be coming to an end.  Obama's claim at the G7 summit that Putin is "wrecking the Russian economy" because of the sanctions, is therefore quite simply nonsense.

The sanctions have ensured that the blame for the recession has been diverted from Putin to the West (see our comments  at the end of our lengthy discussion of the recession Russia's Recession: A Necessary Re-Balancing, Russia Insider, 5th June 2015). In consequence, the sanctions have not reduced Putin's popularity, which has grown to stratospheric levels. There is no sign of the political challenge to Putin's leadership the West assumed would happen when they imposed the sanctions (see our lengthy discussion What the Story of Putin's "Disappearance" Says about How the West Misunderstands Russia, Russia Insider, 23rd March 2015)
 
Nor have the sanctions changed Russian policy or improved Ukraine's situation, which in all respects remains dire.

The Ukraine economy remains in crisis. The G7 made no specific promise of more money to help Ukraine. Instead its final communique talks of "financial and technical support" rather than money, speaking of the G7's "commitment to working together with the international financial institutions and other partners to provide financial and technical support as Ukraine moves forward with its transformation" - in effect kicking the ball back to the IMF, the international financial institution in question.

Crimea remains Russian and the West has quietly accepted the fact despite words to the contrary in the G7 communique, which however does not link the ending of the sanctions to the return of Crimea to Ukraine.  

All the biggest defeats the Ukrainian army has suffered (in the Southern Cauldron, at Ilovaisk, at Donetsk airport and at Debaltsevo) have happened after the sanctions were imposed.

Though Ukraine refuses to negotiate with the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as the Minsk Memorandum required it to do, their de facto independence from Kiev is increasing, facilitated by the blockade the Ukrainian government, contrary to the commitments it made in Minsk, continues to impose on them. That independence has now almost certainly gone beyond the point of no return, with even the Economist, in an otherwise deeply mendacious article, now grudgingly admitting that "after a year-long war, people in Donbas are not prepared to be governed by Kiev".

So why if the sanctions have failed is the G7 persisting with them, and indeed threatening even more of them?

The short answer is because lifting the sanctions when none of their objectives have been achieved would be to admit their failure, something the G7 leaders cannot bring themselves to do.

This inability to admit failure, with the result that US and Western leaders persistently reinforce failure by doubling-down on failed policies, is the besetting vice of US and Western policy making.

Thus, to cite just two recent examples, the US persists in supporting the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria, causing the rise of the Islamic State there, and the EU persists in demanding Greece pay debts it cannot afford to pay, causing the prospect of a disorderly Grexit to grow.

Meanwhile disagreement with the sanctions policy in Europe is now so strong the G7 leaders cannot allow them to be relaxed even a little so as to appease their increasingly restive business community, since they know that if they were, there would be no possibility of their ever being tightened up again.

The reality - which the Russians are fully aware of and upon which they have based their economic plans - is that there is no prospect of the sanctions being lifted any time soon.  

Most probably they will never be formally lifted at all, but will simply be allowed to melt away, as happened to the sanctions the West imposed on China after the Tiananmen affair.

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#39
Ukraine Today
http://uatoday.tv
June 8, 2015
White House: No US supplies of offensive weapons to Ukraine

"The president's view has not changed about, at this point, not providing additional offensive military assistance to Ukraine".

UNIAN - The United States does not intend to deliver offensive weapons to Ukraine, as this would not contribute to a peaceful solution of the conflict in the east of the country, according to a statement of White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest, Russian news agency RIA Novosti has reported.

"Providing additional offensive military capabilities to Ukraine, in the mind of the president, would only further escalate a situation that must be resolved diplomatically," Earnest told journalists on Sunday at the G7 summit in Germany.

He noted that the United States had already provided military assistance to Kyiv, which he said reflects "the depth of U.S. commitment to Ukraine."

On May 15, the US Congress passed a defense budget bill that would allocate USD 300 million in lethal defensive weapons for Ukraine government forces. However U.S. President Barack Obama has so far been reluctant to provide such assistance to Kyiv.

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#40
http://readrussia.com
June 8, 2015
Yes, the West Should Probably Help Ukraine, But, No, It Probably Won't
By Mark Adomanis

The recent economic news out of Ukraine has been unremittingly horrible. In the first quarter of 2015, GDP declined by an astounding 17%, while inflation spiked to an annual rate of roughly 60%. Those are great-depression level numbers, an economic catastrophe that makes the withering recession that accompanied the end of the Soviet Union look almost modest in comparison.

Yes the economic situation might (emphasis on "might") stabilize from here on out, but enormous damage has already been done. Ukrainian living standards, already among the very worst in Europe, are now at truly third-world levels: wages and pensions have been decimated by the hryvnia's depreciation and the enormous increase in energy costs. The word "disaster" is often bandied about in popular discourse ("the Phillies starting pitching is a disaster this year"), but in this case it is all too appropriate.  

So, from a moral and humanitarian standpoint, the West would be totally justified in giving Ukraine a generous package of financial assistance. I'm not talking about weapons or military aid (which, if anything, would be likely to further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis) but about money for food, medical care, and other necessities that are increasingly out of reach of most of the Ukrainian population.

There is a vocal chorus of people in the West making exactly this argument. They argue that absent a drastic change in policy, Ukraine will likely be lost to economic and political chaos and, perhaps, even slump back into the Kremlin's obit. People making this argument are not uniformly right-wing, but they do come primarily from conservative political parties. The Republican party, for example, has been substantially more aggressive in its rhetoric about Ukrainian than its democratic counterpart.

The problem is that it precisely many of the same conservative politicians who have been the loudest voices arguing that "we are out of money" and that Western welfare states need to be aggressively curbed who are now calling on the European Union and the United States to substantially increase their assistance to Ukraine.

This is a classic boy who cried wolf moment, proof that actions do, in fact, have consequences. As a politician you cannot spend 5 years loudly and repeatedly arguing that your country is totally broke and that the government budget must be brought into balance at all costs and then turn around at a moment's notice and say "oh, by the way, taxpayers, we urgently need to give Ukraine $50 billion."

I don't want to get into the debate about the merits of economic austerity versus stimulus because, at the end of the day, it is an irresolvable one in which peoples' positions are almost always determined by their ideological priors rather than any kind of objective look at the real world. What I am simply saying is that the crusaders for austerity cannot have it both ways: they cannot say that everything is unaffordable and that government spending needs to have an axe taken to it while simultaneously arguing that taxpayers need to shell out enormous sums of money to a country about which most of those taxpayers don't particularly care. Domestic austerity coupled with generous foreign aid is just a totally incoherent argument.

The right-wing focus on austerity throughout the West, incidentally, seems to explain why both the Europeans and the Americans have, despite their loud vocal enthusiasm for Ukraine, been so persistently unwilling to cough up any actual money to support it in its standoff against Russia. They understand that, politically speaking, they can't. They've painted themselves into a corner. They have desperately tried to slough off the costs of bailing out Ukraine on anyone and everyone else: the World Bank, the IMF, and Ukraine's private creditors.

Any politician who had based their electoral identity on savage cuts to domestic spending who then came out and publicly advocated for a risky and expensive bailout of a corruption-riddled country like Ukraine would be the political equivalent of dead meat. Unless their constituency consisted entirely of hawkish think tank employees, they'd be virtually guaranteed to lose their next election in a landslide.

I don't think this was terribly astute politics by the conservatives, by the way. In their zeal to score points they made quite over-heated statements about the imminent financial doom facing their own countries. These attacks were often quite popular (the politics of resentment might appear unseemly but is often extremely effective) but have also drastically limited the policy options on offer.

It's always possible, of course, that the various fiscally conservative Western governments will just ignore their own rhetoric. Stranger things have happened in politics. I've seen other writers, like Matt Yglesias, make persuasive arguments that the only substantial stimulus that's likely to occur in the West is a military-based anti-Russian one (sort of like Reagan's build-up in the 80s).

But the West's utter reluctance to aid Ukraine, which at first glance might look inexplicable or bizarre, seems to derive from domestic political conditions, conditions in which many Western governments are operating under the expectation that they will take whatever steps are necessary to put their fiscal houses in order. Unless those political conditions change, and they don't seem to be in any hurry to, Ukraine is unlikely to get more than the paltry sums that have already been on offer.

 

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 #41
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
June 9, 2015
The Western Backed Assault on Donbass Shattered My IIlusion of Living in a Compassionate, Humanist Society
Vera Graziadei on how the seeing the west provoke and encourage carnage in her native Ukraine has led to her eyes opening to the phonines of western pretentions to maintaining morally-superior, liberal-humanist societies

Vera Graziadei is a British Ukrainian Russian actress and writer. Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Vera has published a popular blog, where she shares her views on the Ukrainian conflict. She explains, 'I'm not anti-American or pro-Putin. I'm anti-violence and war, and I'm pro-dialogue, referendum, mutual respect and understanding between Euro-maidan and anti-Maidan sides.' As an actress, she is best known for playing Elena on Channel 4's (UK) cult series Peep Show.  

Before going into acting, she achieved a degree in Philosophy and Economics and a Masters in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.  She continued studying Philosophy while working as an actress, focusing on Existentialism, and completed a foundation course in Psychotherapy/Psychoanalysis.

Her other passions are Comedy and Literature (esp. Russian classics).

It's been a year since my rose-hued (though already stained) worldview crashed, a year of facing the bare harsh reality of the way things work in this beautiful cruel world, a year of peeling off my treasured illusions, one by one.

My comforting illusions about living in a morally-superior, humanist liberal society, which respects and cares for human lives around the world. My treasured illusions, which I would still cling to if I could, but which do not stick to me anymore.

I admit I've already had one eye-opening moment in my life (didn't we all?) - when I protested on the streets, alongside hundreds of thousands of other citizens, against the war in Iraq, but this country, to which I swore my allegiance before God, went into the illegal war anyway, a war which cost millions of innocent lives, a war that no one ever repented for. War criminals lecturing and prospering, warmongers still writing and publishing - blossoming careers everywhere you look.

I felt physically sick and disorientated then and devoured Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, George Monbiot and whoever else was critical of the current world order and was selling in the politics section of LSE bookshop. I was reading to make sense of events, to see the bigger picture, to orientate myself in the world and to know where to go next.

And the conclusion I came to then after all this reading, after all this education? To escape. Escape from this horrible real world into the world of fiction, because I wasn't strong enough to live with this brutal reality, to continue making sense of it, to continue tolerating it and interacting with it, to continue being aware of the blood on the hands that feed me and comfort me.

Entertainment. In the world of entertainment it is very easy to be...well, entertained. Even if somewhere far away drones are falling on people's homes, you are in this cosy cocoon, feeling relaxed and cool. Things around you look good (carefully designed and built by set designers), people are beautiful (thank you, make-up and hair artists), words flowing are witty and/or meaningful (writers, you are the best). It's all pleasant, enjoyable and fun, just as it is enjoyable and fun for the audience, and so it is easy to forget and ignore.

My achievement over the last few years is that I've managed several times to participate in the distraction of a few million people from the brutal reality of wars and poverty and injustice. Distracting myself by distracting others. Entertaining while being entertained. And being recognised and admired and pampered for it (when you get to do it).

During those years of forgetting, I'd probably spend far longer hours at my psychotherapist's room, if IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh and *shameless plug alert* Peep Show didn't exist. On the whole it's much cheaper and easier to just laugh things off, than to really look at them critically and begin thinking about how to change them.

In fact, distracting people from things that must be changed is the key to maintaining a status quo. Just look at the wages that Hollywood stars get paid to get an idea how much the market values distraction.

Distraction is the glue that holds this society together. If not for proper distraction, quality entertainment, we would all be on the streets rioting. That's it! Now I've got it. I can't be distracted anymore. I was able to before, but now I can't.

You might not be interested in politics, but politics is always interested in you. For a few years I could easily ignore news , not buy papers and scroll down past political posts of friends, because they didn't directly concern me and because they were regarding events far away - Middle East, Africa, Asia.

Places where human rights are not respected, places that are less developed and more corrupt and, therefore, where wars are inevitable and where democracy must be enforced by more developed peoples like ourselves. Right? Something like that.

All you need to live comfortably in a world, where atrocities are initiated, supported or ignored by our governments is just a vague narrative in your head, supported by a few NYTimes/Guardian/Times/Independent/ articles and constant flow of BBC/CNN propaganda about corruption of some dictator somewhere, who (unlike our own benevolent leaders) is hungry for power and wealth, is envious of our good fortune, prosperity and liberated morals and who is actively plotting to annihilate or invade us.

The moment this narrative is embedded in our heads and is not questioned by us, the rest of the world can burn down in ashes and all we'll feel is either indifference or a sense that, even if it looks a bit gory and messy, ultimately it's for the best, that is for our own personal best, just like our papers tell us. Isn't this the mindset of the majority of people? Wasn't this my mindset before?

My maternal grandmother used to say: "There was no Truth, there is no Truth and there will be no Truth and so never endeavour to search for it". She also dreamt of being an actress. One could think that I unconsciously assimilated her beliefs and desires in the first years of my life, while she was still alive and looking after me, and that this ancestral drive was ultimately stronger than my own personal inner drive, which was to search for the Truth, the drive that led me to start a Philosophy Society in Brighton College (sounds grander than it was - it was just a couple of geeky discussions) and then study it at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at LSE.

At some stage this ancestral drive kicked in, a valve switched in my head and I decided that I had enough of searching for the Truth (in the context of my masters it was the truth about sovereignty, rights, justice and morals), because it didn't exist, just like my grandmother always said, and instead I went into the world, where Truth is more fluid and one month you can dwell into one Truth and next month, with a new project, into another Truth.

I remember often re-reading these lines in Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground":

"all plain men and men of action are active only because they are dull-witted and mentally undeveloped. How is that to be explained? Why, like this: owing to their arrested mental development they mistake the nearest and secondary causes for primary causes and in this way persuade themselves much more easily and quickly than other people that they have found a firm basis for whatever business they have in hand and, as a result, they are no longer worried, and that is really the main thing.

For starters being active you must first of all be completely composed in mind and never be in doubt. But how can I, for instance, compose myself? Where am I to find the primary causes to lean against? Where am I to get the basis from? I am constantly exercising my powers of thought and, consequently, every primary cause with me at once draws another one after itself, one still more primary, and so ad infinitum."
I related to these words in so far as I, like an Underground Man, was unable to pursue any activity in the real world, because I could not sufficiently believe in any activity, because as a thinking person, my mind always found reasons for doubting the rightness of any line of action.

This intellectual position of inactivity worked very well with being in a profession, where ultimately I was told what to act. I did not have to commit to any line of action in the real world, yet, unlike the Underground Man, who was isolated from society, I was able to be part of society by acting in a pretend world and being 'actively inactive' (not all actors are, many combine their careers with other jobs and activism, but I wasn't one of those people then).

First they came for Iraqis, and I did not speak out- Because I was not an Iraqi.

Then they came for Libyans, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a Lybian.

Then they came for the Syrians, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a Syrian.

Then they came for .... East Ukrainians and....

Never in my wildest nightmares have I imagined that the land that I was born in will be bombed and shelled with the support of the West. (Britain begins training Ukrainian soldiers, US increasing non-lethal military aid in Ukraine) I'm now deeply ashamed to admit that I'd probably continue being apolitical had this Ukrainian horror not started.

One year ago, on 2nd of June 2014, the Ukrainian Air Force struck central Lugansk (an event which was ignored and misrepresented in western media) killing completely innocent passerbys, mostly women, amongst them Inna Kukuruza, who's death, captured on mobile phone camera and circulated on the internet on the same day, has struck me to the core and prompted me to start writing this blog, which was just my way to order my thoughts about the events that were unfolding. It was me getting back to searching for the Truth.

I discovered for myself that BBC, which I used to have high trust in, is as biased and propagandistic, if not more so, as many other state medias around the world, that the Ukrainian War, is related to US Energy War, that the Ukrainian government's tactics of justifying, promoting and starting the 'anti-terrorist operation' are similar to the way other countries have initiated and promoted genocide in the past, that international humanitarian organisations are biased and sponsored by warmongers (Human Rights Watch connection to Soros).

I also tried to make sense of why East Ukrainian victims are ignored and officially complained to the BBC  for misrepresenting events and received a polite reply, which ultimately changed nothing. Finally, I (very roughly) outlined for how the system works, what's the problem with the people running them and what is the alternative way of being and resisting.

This was all a personal intellectual endeavour, which helped me to order my own thoughts and calm down my pain and grief. At some stage this blog had over 10,000 views per article and thanks to it, I dipped my toes into the world of journalism with my pieces published in BNE, Russia Insider, New Cold War, Signs of the Times,Global Research Centre for Research on Globalization and OpedNews. I've never accepted any payment for any of my work, even when it was offered, and I declined work for any media, which is state-funded. I am very grateful to everyone who's been reading this blog and supported me and who found it an inspiration to write their own blogs and to join in the international debate.

I'll continue searching for the Truth (even though I've paused writing for a while to deal with the illness and death of my father) as an independent thinker and will proudly continue doing what one media expert said of me as a criticism - "to wear my heart on my sleeve".

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 #42
Interfax
June 9, 2015
Ukraine defending Europe, world order, says Yatsenyuk

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called for unity of the European Union and the United States needed "to defeat the aggressor."

He made the statement at a forum of the American Jewish Committee during a working visit to Washington DC, the Ukrainian government press service has reported.

"We are positive that we can regain control over Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea. We will control our territory."

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called for unity of the European Union and the United States needed "to defeat the aggressor."

Ukraine is a vital element of the nuclear non-proliferation program and peace and stability across Europe, Yatsenyuk continued.

He also emphasized the importance of "unity of EU members and the free world."

In the opinion of Yatsenyuk, both the unity of European Union countries and the unity of the U.S. and the EU were significant. "Your unity is the best recipe and the best response to any aggressor and any aggression. This is the only possible and potent response to those who want to disrupt the world order and 'draw' new borders in the post-WWII world, who do not respect rights, freedoms, democracy and our nations," Yatsenyuk said.

"Ukraine is defending not only itself; we are defending Europe and international law and order," he said.

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 #43
Washington Post
June 9, 2015
What is at stake in Ukraine if Russia continues its onslaught
By Arseniy Yatsenyuk
Arseniy Yatsenyuk is prime minister of Ukraine.

Ukraine is fighting a war on two fronts. The one you see on television is taking place in the east of our country, where thousands of Russian troops are engaged in an armed aggression against Ukraine's territorial integrity, including the illegal annexation of Crimea.

Less visible, but just as important, is Ukraine's war against the Soviet past and the legacy of corruption and misrule that has held us back for so many years. These battles must be fought and won together because they are essentially about the same thing - Ukraine's desire to build a prosperous and democratic future.

Russian President Vladi­mir Putin wants us to fail because he knows that democratic ideas are contagious and that a free Ukraine would set an unwelcome example at home. Russia's military intervention is an attempt to prevent change by forcing us to choose between security and reform.

Ukrainians are united in rejecting this choice. We know that the only way to regain control over our future is to create a modern Western society based on accountable government, a free-market economy and rule of law. Instead of slowing the pace of political and economic change, we are accelerating it.

Many landmark reforms have already been implemented.

We have ensured severe budget discipline and started full-scale economic deregulation to cut away the jungle of red tape that stifles enterprise and enables corruption. We are removing the distorting influence of business tycoons in economic and public life. We have delegated financial authority to local communities, which are closer to our citizens.

Our tough decision to impose large domestic gas tariffs will simultaneously remove a main avenue of corruption, increase efficiency, boost domestic production and reduce the need for Russian imports.

We have initiated a wave of corruption investigations and arrests, including against senior state officials. We significantly reduced the civil service workforce. The tax system is being simplified to encourage investment and reduce fraud. And these are just the headlines of a much bigger program.

Responsibility for seeing these reforms through lies with Ukraine alone. But we need the support of our partners to help us stabilize our economy and deter further Russian aggression while we carry them out.

We are grateful for the help we have already received. We would not have been able to stabilize our financial position without the International Monetary Fund program agreed to in February. We will need more support in the form of U.S. bilateral aid, technical assistance, private investment and leadership within international financial institutions. We also need international sanctions on Russia to remain in place until the Minsk Agreement has been fully implemented.

No one should have any doubt what is at stake. The great achievement of a "Europe whole and free" that marked the end of the Cold War is under direct attack from resurgent Russian authoritarianism and imperialism. Ukraine is bearing the brunt of that attack, but the consequences of allowing our independence to be crushed would not be contained within Ukraine. It would give rise to new threats and crises that would be even more difficult and costly to resolve. The democratic idea itself would be undermined.

Together, we can prevent that. With our firm commitment to reform and the support of our partners, we can fulfill the dreams of our nation for freedom and prosperity. Democracy is the most powerful idea ever conceived and never more so than when democratic nations stand shoulder to shoulder. That has been the lesson of U.S. leadership over the past century. It remains our inspiration today.

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 #44
Sputnik
June 9, 2015
Yatsenyuk Pledges to Reclaim Crimea, Donbass, Pleads for Washington's Help

Ukraine's prime minister recently penned an article for The Washington Post where he once again blames Russia and describes how courageously Ukraine is battling Russia's armed imperialism; the politician also gives his reasons why President Putin fears Kiev and promises to reclaim Crimea.

According to the head of the Ukrainian government, his country "is fighting a war on two fronts: the one you see on television is taking place in the east of our country." The second one, Yatsenyuk claims, is "less visible, but just as important. It is Ukraine's war against the Soviet past and the legacy of corruption and misrule that has held us back for so many years. These battles must be fought and won together because they are essentially about the same thing - Ukraine's desire to build a prosperous and democratic future."

The politician gave his vision of "what is at stake".

"The great achievement of a 'Europe whole and free' that marked the end of the Cold War is under direct attack from resurgent Russian authoritarianism and imperialism. Ukraine is bearing the brunt of that attack, but the consequences of allowing our independence to be crushed would not be contained within Ukraine. It would give rise to new threats and crises that would be even more difficult and costly to resolve. The democratic idea itself would be undermined."

Yatsenyuk also says that President Putin is afraid of Ukraine and gives his reasons why.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin wants us to fail because he knows that democratic ideas are contagious and that a free Ukraine would set an unwelcome example at home. Russia's military intervention is an attempt to prevent change by forcing us to choose between security and reform."

The prime minister however confessed that Kiev still needs support in the form of US sanctions against Russia.

"We will need more support in the form of US bilateral aid, technical assistance, private investment and leadership within international financial institutions. We also need international sanctions on Russia to remain in place until the Minsk Agreement has been fully implemented."

Later on Monday, the politician pledged that Kiev will regain control over Crimea and Donbass.

"We are convinced that we will regain control over Donetsk, Lugasnk and Crimea. And we will control our territory," Yatsenyuk claimed while addressing the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington.

According to the politician, the unity of the European Union and the US "is the best recipe and the best answer to any aggressor and any aggression. The only strong answer to those who want to overturn the world order and 'draw' new borders after the Second World War, to those who do not respect rights and freedom, does not respect democracy, does not respect our nations. Those are our enemies."

He called the military conflict in the east of his country "a battle between light and darkness".

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 #45
Bloomberg
June 9, 2015
Ukraine Must Seek New Russia Gas Deal as Military Tensions Rise
by Elena Mazneva

Ukraine needs to negotiate a new natural-gas deal with Russia just as the conflict between the two countries risks escalating again.

A gas-price agreement with Russian exporter OAO Gazprom expires at the end of the month and Ukraine requires fuel to replenish stockpiles before the winter. At the same time, a truce between the government in Kiev and pro-Russian rebels appears to be breaking down after fighting near the eastern city of Donetsk killed more than 20 last week.

Another "bloody clash is very possible in the coming weeks -- as a provocation -- amid talks on extending sanctions against Russia," said Vasily Kashin at the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow. "That's a threat for a gas pact."

Gas has been a key element in Russia's troubled relationship with Ukraine, which still relies on its larger neighbor for about half of its supply. The issue is also critical to Europe's energy security because about 10 percent of the region's supply passes through Ukraine's pipelines.

Europe might face a risk of disruptions this winter -- similar to 2006 and 2009 -- if Russia and Ukraine can't reach a deal, said Alexander Paraschiy, an analyst at Concorde Capital in Kiev.

If Russia ends the current discount it gives Ukraine, it would make it hard for Kiev, which is struggling to meet its international debt obligations, to pay for gas. Alternative supplies from Europe are unlikely to be able to fill the gap, especially given Gazprom's ability to influence flows within Europe.

Coldest Months

If the situation escalates, Ukraine might be forced to take the gas Russia ships through its pipelines to the European Union during the coldest winter months, Paraschiy said.

"If the dispute continues in the heating season, Ukraine would have to take the EU-bound gas," Paraschiy said. The country will need even more gas than last year because its coal stocks are lower, he said.

Ukraine's state gas company, NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy, had 10.7 billion cubic meters of gas in underground storage last week, while the level should be at least 19 billion, according to the Russian Energy Ministry.

Russia and Ukraine filed claims against each other in international arbitration last year over gas supply and transit contracts in place through 2019, awaiting for a ruling next year at the earliest.

Economic Crisis

State-run Gazprom claims its Ukrainian counterpart owes $29.5 billion, while Naftogaz demands more than $16 billion from the Russian company.

Still, Simon Pirani, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said the ability of Ukraine to import gas from Slovakia, coupled with the impact of the economic crisis on demand, mean Ukraine may be able to cope without Russian gas, especially in a mild winter.

Russia's gas supplies to Ukraine, halted for almost six months last year, proceeded after the EU mediated two interim deals between the countries, which allowed the gas price to fall to a level close to the average in Europe.

Russia is still considering whether to extend the current pact through the third quarter or to the end of the year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said last week.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned on June 4 of a"full scale" Russian invasion in eastern Ukraine, an allegation denied in Moscow.

While the EU, Russian and Ukrainian officials will discuss extending the gas agreement later this month, a final decision would depend on the government in Moscow, Novak said.

Much will depend on the effectiveness of EU diplomacy now, according to Paraschiy.

"The European Commission faces a difficult task -- to study all risks and put pressure on Ukraine and Russia to prevent disruptions in energy supplies," Paraschiy said.

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 #46
Interfax-Ukraine
June 9, 2015
Gazprom: gas transit through Ukraine to end after 2019, come what may
 
Gazprom has no plans to continue using Ukraine as a transit country for gas exports after 2019, Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev told journalists.

"When the transit contract with Ukraine expires, there will be no prolongation, no conclusion of a new transit agreement under any circumstances. In light of the economic, commercial, technological, investment and political risks for gas transit, there will be no more transit through Ukraine, even if hell freezes over. The analysis has been done: in order for the Ukrainian system to be able to function even in its current regime, $12 billion must be invested to support transit," he said.

For now Gazprom has not held talks with consumers in Europe on shifting the gas acceptance points, because it is not yet clear what routes will be used. "The practice of shifting acceptance points is absolutely normal, there is nothing critical about this," Medvedev said. Gas delivered to an acceptance point on the border between Turkey and Greece will be closer to the market than gas delivered to current acceptance points on the Ukrainian border, he said.

"We are implementing Turkish Stream to diversify supplies, are ready to supply as much gas to Europe as Europe wants. We will build Turkish Stream. As for what is to be done with that gas further on: we await proposals from the European side," Medvedev said.

Medvedev said it was unfortunate that European officials do not take an active part in the life of the gas industry. For example, at the last World Gas Congress in Paris last week, "not a single representative of the European Commission attended."

"Perhaps [when last year's congress was held] in Malaysia, they saved on airfare. But you can walk from Brussels to Paris, sleep under the bridges. I see this as being a bit odd," he said.

Gazprom has also familiarized itself with the Eastring gas pipeline project in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. "This will enable Slovakia to retain transit volumes, including gas from Russia. The ball is now in Europe's court," he said.

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 #47
Russia ramps up motor fuel sales to Ukraine, regardless of conflict
By Damir Khalmetov and Anna Bondarenko
Reuters

MOSCOW, June 8 - Russian companies, spurred by healthy profits, have sharply raised sales of vital motor fuel to Ukraine this year, while at the same time also supplying the area of the country held by pro-Moscow separatists.

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) use in Ukraine as a much cheaper alternative to gasoline rose 17 percent in 2014 from the previous year. Ukraine is now heavily dependant for LPG on Russia, which has overtaken Kazakhstan as its main supplier. Despite the conflict in east Ukraine, trade continues, albeit with friction, as Kiev is reliant on Russian gas and exports agricultural commodities to its neighbor.

LPG exports from Russia to Ukraine, including the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) held by the separatists, rose by 72 percent from January to April 2015, calculations by Reuters showed.

Sales totaled 106,522 tonnes compared with 61,810 tons in the same period last year, according to the calculations, based on customs statistics.

Western governments have imposed sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine but the companies that supply LPG to Ukraine say their operations are lawful.

"The policy of every company is: 'You can postpone a war, but never a lunch'," said one of the traders. "No one is going to let go of their profits."

The main LPG exporters from Russia are: Rosneft - 58 percent of total volume; Gazprom - 16 percent; United Petrochemical Company, owned by Bashneft, - 13 percent; Sibur - 5.0 percent; TAIF-NK, Surgutneftegas and Forteinvest - 2 percent each.

A Sibur subsidiary, Sibur International, made railroad LPG shipments to Ukraine in January-February 2015, but the company does not think increased LPG supplies to Ukraine is a trend.

"Recent LPG supplies to Ukraine (sale at the border) were in January-February 2015. Ownership of the product passed from Sibur to buyers on the Russian-Ukrainian border," Sibur's press service said, adding that the customers were then in charge of transportation and delivery to terminals on Ukrainian soil. Gazprom, Rosneft and Bashneft could not be reached for comment.

LPG shipments by oil tank trucks through Russian road checkpoints at Gukovo and Donetsk began in winter 2015, according to reports from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

"(OSCE) observers saw oil tank trucks, with the Russian inscriptions 'propane' and 'flammable'," that crossed the border in both directions through both road checkpoints," starting at the beginning of February this year, according to OSCE reports.

LPG supply by oil tank truck shipments from Russia to Donetsk and to Luhansk provinces (including DPR and LPR) began in late 2014 and increased in January-April 2015, according to Russian customs statistics.

The volumes were: 148 tons in January, 1,444 tons in February, 2,612 tons in March and 3,262 tons in April. LPG export shipments in oil tank trucks from the Rostov and Belgorod regions to the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces (including the DNR and LNR) were about 7,500 tons in January-April 2015 vs about 150 tons in 2014, according to the Reuters data.

Marginal Market

LPG supplies to Donetsk and Lugansk are attractive due to the high propane prices at fuel filling stations in the regions compared to the nearby Russian region of Rostov.

In addition, LPG supplies to the DNR and LNR from within Ukraine have been blocked and some of the largest fuel filling networks, such as Parallel, is not operating, pushing prices up further at fuel filling stations.

"Only a few stations are working. Yes, the major networks have closed, but some fuel stations work," said one market participant.

Russian exporters have supplied LPG from Russia to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions through little-known intermediary companies.

The main volume of shipments comes from Gazprom (Orenburg GTP, Surgut CSP and Astrakhan GPP) - 47 percent; Sibur (Tobolskneftehim and Nyagangazpererabotka) - 28 percent; Surgutneftegaz (Surgut UPG) and Rosneft (Ryazan Refinery, Novokuibyshevskaya petrochemical company and Zaikinskiy GPP) each have 13 and 10 percent, respectively.

Payments between the contracting parties take place in cash in Russian rubles and LPG transportation is handled by Russian and Ukrainian oil tank trucks, according to market participants.

Russian suppliers, attracted by the high-yield Ukrainian market, have been competing with firms from Belarus and Kazakhstan, their partners in a Customs Union.

Belarus and Kazakhstan's share in LPG supply to Ukraine in 2014 dropped dramatically. Kazakhstan's share fell to 34 percent (164,000 tonnes) from 41 percent and Belarus' share sank to 15 percent (72,000 tonnes) from 22 percent in 2013, respectively.

Their share was filled by Russian companies, particularly Rosneft (notably the Novokuibyshevskaya petrochemical company) and United Petrochemical Company (UPC) plants, owned by Bashneft and Gazprom.

LPG railway supplies from Russia to the domestic Ukrainian market went through the following border crossings, according to Russian railway data):

· Solovey (Belgorod region, Russia) / Topoli (Kharkov region, Ukraine) - 65 percent of total rail supply;

· Suzemka (Bryansk region, Russia) / Zernovo (Sumy region, Ukraine) - 31 percent;

· Krasniy Hutor (Belgorod region, Russia) / Kazachia Lopan (Kharkov region, Ukraine) - 4 percent.

Last year, small amounts of liquefied natural gas were supplied to Ukraine through the Uspenskaya border crossing (Russia's Rostov region ) /Kvashino Ukraine's Donetsk region), but the crossing stopped working in the middle of 2014.

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which include areas under the control of the DPR and the LPR, consumes 200,000-250,000 tonnes of LPG per year, traders estimated.

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